Erschütterung
by Phit
Summary: Translated: vibration. A collection of short mythology, faerie tales, and folk lore from Lyra's world. Sometimes lies are used to cover truth but that doesn't mean truth ceases to exist.
1. Erschütterung

Feddin pulled out a thick-sheeted journal from an inside coat pocket and laid it out alongside his tutor's coffee cake plate as she nodded thanks to their waiter. The son of a rich merchant, Feddin had moved to Brytain with his parents while his father sought firmer business holds in London. Born into a family of travel and shipping business, he'd now been waylaid to a small cottage in the skirts of Abingdon with only a few servants and his tutor to attend to him on a daily basis.

A total lack of progress in his studies had brought him the ultimatum from his tutor: improve, or she would send for his parents. He knew the course well enough after that. First he'd take care of his mother, wheeling her in from the taxi to sit by the window with her d?on looking limp and cold n her lap as her husband tended quickly to ordering the servants about. Then Feddin's inadequacies would be listed out for him in the child-like voice of his father's latest attractive secretary.

'Your father says you're such a troublesome child. And looking so disrespectful when he brings company, even! Such untended hair and you've not been listening, and make those shoes shine before dinner, more of the partners are coming in for late tea.' She'd flip her gloves onto the table like the pronouncement and righteousness of a judge's gavel and smile then.

And his father would look down his nose with impatience at him before turning his back again.

"Feddin," his tutor produced a dainty set of nails as she reached for the journal he'd laid down for her, her equally dainty d?on, an iridescent moth, landed as a bracelet for her lovely wrist. "What is this?"

"That's it right there, ma'am. That's what I told you I'd do and I wrote it all out so you could see why I have trouble with learning things sometimes. I wrote it nicely, too, and it's all English, and proper, because I knew that was better. Even you must think I speak quite well."

"I do."

"But you can read that later or whenever, and I think maybe then you won't have to send for mum or dad then?" He smiled with absolute confidence at her.

"We'll see then, Feddin, I do hope you're right." She returned the smile, and her bracelet flapped in anticipation.

A small saucer scattered with crumbs and a cup devoid of tea greeted the waiter's return.

--

"Erschüterung," his tutor began.

"Well, I did lie a bit." Feddin admitted, "the title's in German, but that's all, I promise. The English language doesn't seem to have the right word for it," he frowned in thought, "it's sound isn't right."

"Quite," the tutor agreed, and tilted her head prettily to the side with a half-smile starting to cross her face. "Is there anything else of a lie in here, Feddin?" She questioned him as her eyes danced over the first few lines.

"No, ma'am. True, every bit of it."

--

Not all stories will belong to the author who claims them, but they all have meaning.


	2. Paper Dolls

Once Upon a time there was a young princess...

She was born to a young King and Queen, and celebrated throughout the kingdom as no birth before hers had been. So enamored of their newborn daughter were the King and Queen that they decided to hold a royal ball which would be attended by all the dukes and duchesses and counts and countesses and families of the court, so splendid was their love for their new daughter.

The castle servants went in haste as one to the kitchens:

We need three cakes, yes stop that protesting - and don't you start, I can see you're lying your d?on there is clucking her head off! But the little princess will have it and you'd best thank your good stars their majesties didn't find bits of eggshell in there last time with your sloppy cookery! And is there anymore duck in town or should we run off to buy up some quail, instead? The roasting went so well last time...

And the villagers would send up their young children to take part in the help:

There, I think I've gotten the crease just right and you'll take a carriage up there I won't have you stepping around in dirt with those shoes we just bought! And don't speak unless you're spoken to. And of course, remember everything and report it back to us, your aunt hasn't left her bed in three days or she'd love to attend herself - friends in the court, you know. She is quite the beauty - and of age since her d?on's settled - such a shame she's taken sick!

And the royal decorator would arrive immersed in the throes of glamourous decor:

Would their daughter like the carved ice dove or toy rattle? Why both, certainly, and my how you'll win favor with the Queen sculpting her own dove so lovely! Will there be dancing? Of course, dancing! Why, this space here is inlaid marble with obsidian accents along the border, does it not seem like a floor fit for dancing? And a band to play, for certain? Well, yes. But how far do your contacts reach, we have heard of quite the lovely start-up of performers from Barcelona. And flowers, I take it? Flowers and columnades and gilded roses and crystal glasses! And official proclamations and gifts of fine jewelry for the new babe and laughter, such laughter, and a performance of acrobats and bards and singers and a menagerie in the garden!

And thus the ball would be set up. And life in the castle would hasten with effort to arrange it.

"But a daughter may not rule the kingdom!" The maids would gossip.

"It does not matter, to the King his daughter is most valuable in his negotiations. She may marry princes of other countries and expand his rule. To him she is everything he ever wanted, for through her his power will grow. He doesn't even need to go to war!"

"But his son will rule him in succession of his own land and wealth. The King did not make such uproar over his firstborn," the maids would then say, and their little four-legged d?ons would bark unhappily and look round to make sure no one listened.

"It is because his son will rule after him that The King so hates him and so jealously keeps his love from the boy! As much as an asset the young Prince is, he is also a threat in the eyes of his majesty. Who better of an enemy than the one born to take your power."

And the maids would be scuttled off to polish more silver or dust out the pantries to make room for fresh vegetables or call into the market to look for just the right mixture of sand to keep the pedestals in the gardens from toppling over when bird cages and crystal globes were placed on top of them.

And the ball did come, with such splendour and attendance that the young Queen clapped her hands together and spun circles with her newborn daughter as her d?on, a dove, pushed ever so lovingly at the small mouse-shaped d?on of her little girl, beckoning him to take wing and learn to fly.

The gowns were lavish, and the speech the highest in calibre and educated with travel, with learning. The music soared and comforted and spread beautifully. The men stepped down the dance line, with the women - glamourous baubles and magnanimous guests - on their arms. And the pink bassinet at the far end of the room, which made small noises like the drop of water in a puddle only so often, was crowded around and fawned over and adored.

As was her right, the King knew.

As was her right, the Queen knew.

As was her right, the proud older brother knew. Not strife in the kingdom from this birth, not division of loyalties and constant warring for the Father's assets, not the need to outdo and re-outdo until the siblings grew old as youngsters playing commander in an adult's world are so wont to. Not hatred and trickeries and deeds so vile as to strike the vilest of associates in tight brotherhood when they occur, but love.

A sister meant love, companionship. Only five years would separate them and such frolics the boy had planned already - the Prince had no friends his own age, none were left to be around him. He was to be an adult as quickly as made possible, but she would become his safe haven from the world of adults.

And the ball steeped long into the night, the music only becoming richer, the guests only enjoying themselves more, and the King only so happy in all that had been accomplished in his life so far. He bent and stroked his small, slightly wolf-like d?on at his side while they stood near the infant, and together they looked over and felt fulfilled with the happiness in the kingdom they'd made.

It was only as the darkness came complete, and the sounds of night picked up outside as the sounds of the birds in the menagerie became panicked with squawking, that the mystery began.

It started out slowly, with some faint glow coming in around the edges from the darkness outside, as if it meant only to nibble at the edges until it found where best to bite down. And then it gained speed, and the guests shifted uncomfortably from the dance floor, unsure what had made them leave but feeling all the same that the warmth of candlelight was in some contrast with another, more devilish, developing glow. And, taking heart of the ball, the mystery began in earnest.

Light poured into the ballroom in syrupy thickness, blinding in its glare from the golden decorations which filled the room. Light dazzled and skipped along marble columns, wrapped divinely around stone archways and stuck imploringly at the guests - the moving shimmering light dancing readily, as if each ray and shimmer were its own leaf buffeting lightly against the breeze in its own whimsical pattern. And the breeze did come so lightly and the rattle did sound so lightly, as if through the most delicate of tree branches, tingling with tinny cacophony. And the smell came earthy and fragrant and old, as if the ballroom had been taken over by the very centre of some great inhuman forest.

As if - 


	3. First Measure: Staccato

"But you've stopped in the middle of the sentence!" His tutor chideded suddenly from her reading and turned the page. "Well you've inked this page out, now. I certainly can't read through that."

"I apologise, but it wasn't in the right place, you see. I would've torn that first few pages out but the journal has a lot of meaning for me. A gift from someone while we were traveling - the clasp is supposed to be made from an elephant's tooth."

"Tusk," she corrected him. "And I'm still not happy that you stopped in the middle of the sentence. The style had altered quite drastically by the end, as well."

"As I said, ma'am, it wasn't in the right place."

--

Titles fail me.


	4. Black Shuck

"Every Gyptian kid gets the same warning from their Ma and Pa," Stefen started out. "And it en't that bilge you get washed up 'long round the fens after a flood been that way, it's the real kind of warning: like a life and death thing, where if you're thinking you don't have to attend your Ma she'll be at yer grave all right, soon enough. Even you lot heard it a'fore I'd bet two weeks work with Jurriaan on that much."

The heads around Stefen snapped up with grins at that bet - each as eager as the next to send their elder watch off stinking like fried eel and the rancid spices Jurriaan padded their greasy lengths down with at his stall. The fairs over with, riverbanks behind and canal banks for the moment, the whole of the Eastern Gyptians had been called in for a Roping, a meeting of the heads of all the Gyptian families, over some mystery of inheritance or murder.

At least Stefen would have them believe as much. He'd been born Gyptian with the tongue of a serpent his Ma had told him - fittingly, his d?on wrapped itself tighter around his upper arm, serpent-formed and settled only a few months. She'd flick her tongue at other kid's d?ons until they'd start listening again to Stefen. He needed the attention, he was supposed to watch the group, and in any case, his cousins would avoid the kitchen until all the aunts were done gossiping and fussing around eel pies, putting any stray cousins to a swift floury workload.

"What's this warning then, Stefen?" One of the youngest cousins spoke up, herself full of spite and ready to point Stefen to Jurriaan's eel stall. Stefen had twice left her stranded on the banks around Abingdon and once set her out to buy up pork fat from a candle-seller. She'd gotten into a momentary rough spot on the Oxford banks when he stranded her there, meeting up with the brick burner's children and having to ignore their repeated tries to get her to play with them - while the Oxford townies jeered and made cat calls at her. She wanted nothing more than to push him off into the canals after he stunk like the fried eels.

"Why, the most basic of all!" Stefen smiled widely, "don't go off alone from the narrowboats you're lodging in with!"

The crowd groaned. They all most certainly had heard that warning, and didn't appreciate it again. One of the braver cousins leaped down from the fo'csle and twisted his cap around backward to block out the light and lie down on deck for a nap. Stefen ignored him.

"And I'm going to tell you why that's so, properly like no adults do it." Stefen continued. "You lot ever hear of the phantom-dog Black Shuck?"

A few heads bobbed in various directions, some of them ducking down for a nap on the deck with the braver cousin.

Katrijn and her d?on ran out along Fen River's Way as soon as her family's narrowboat docked partway into the Norfolk territory. Her eldest brother, Nicholas, followed closely on her heels, hiding along the way so she wouldn't see, but not trusting the area vagrants to keep away from his sister if they chanced to find her out so late and alone. She'd never been very brave or confrontational so Nicholas was initially surprised at her decision to accept the dare from Willem. But then the youngest of the Roemer boys - Katrijn's closest sibling in age - had revealed to Nicholas that Katrijn wanted to impress Williem, the boy she'd secretly had a crush on for years.

Of course Katrijn knew better than to leave her family's boat so quietly and just as the sun was about to set, but Willem had put the dare to a group of them earlier as they'd sat eating meat pies and she'd only just worked up the courage up to try and catch his attention - with much encouragement from her friends, of course. No one else even met his eyes at that dare - but there she'd taken it and let her meat pie grow cold then just thinking up all the horrible ways to end up hurt or dead running along even just the end of the Peddar's Way and back before dawn. It would be a challenge, that much she was certain of, but most of the trip she'd be able to follow the waterways until she'd have to branch off to St. Mary's Church.

St. Mary's was the destination, and the satchel she carried on her back held the two instruments of proof she'd hand proudly to Willem in the morning, tired though she was certain to be. Katrijn smiled and began a short jog as her imagination of future memories took flight to keep her pace quick and happy. Willem was always the best - he'd throw farthest if they played some ball game and he could beat anyone their age in a fair fist fight: his d?on would become the most hideous basilisk-like creature then change flicker-quick into a porcupine when the other kid's d?on thought he'd gotten a decent hold. And Willem knew all the aunties and uncles of everyone so he could sneak dessert out of any of them and go onto the next one with sweet apple pastry still running down his chin. And he was fast. He had a rubbing to prove that - a rubbing with a charcoal stick and paper over a tomb marker at St. Mary's Church. Katrijn quietly thrilled and blushed to think she'd soon have a matching badge of honour hanging above her own bunk. Or hidden under her pillow, which was more likely.

Katrijn kept up such a pace she'd hardly even noticed until her feet began stumbling over rocks she could no longer quite make out in the creeping dark, until her arms began pumping goosebumps just as fast as her imaginative adrenaline rush warmed them down. She shrugged deeper into her sweater and pulled a short walking stick from a nearby bush to act as a sort of sturdying prop while her d?on moved as a cat and stepped a path lightly and smoothly just in front of her. She stepped her trail over so that the waterways were a good five yards or more to her right - a precaution so she wouldn't accidentally fall in - but not far enough away to keep the comfortably available sloshing noise from her ears.

Katrijn and her d?on hadn't been walking more than a hundred or so yards in the thickening twilight when the walking stick cracked loudly as it jammed into a hole between two rocks. The noise frightened Katrijn so that she let out a quick yelp and jumped, her heart hammering warmly and loudly in her ribcage and her walking stick lost, she slowed her pace. Now each footstep she took with great care over the suddenly rocky terrain, each slip of her feet brought a small scattering sound of earth and stone - a fact she became hyper-aware of and tried to calm her nerves by balling her hands into small fists. Her d?on retreated to her arms and began cooing out the soothing melodies of the river grasshoppers. She imagined a comforting scene: cooking in the kitchen with her mother back in her own narrowboat, and tried to steady her breathing.

Just as she began thinking more positive thoughts again and her mind strayed once more to Willem and the task she had and her hands began growing pins and needles with the effort of her pressing nails - was when she first heard the animal behind her.

Her d?on, still tucked against her breast, smoothly changed into a rabbit as Katrijn stiffened and froze in place. Her d?on's ears flicked and twitched with effort, the well-tuned eyes of an animal far too readily preyed upon even more alert than Katrijn for signs of movement. A low whistle from her d?on alerted her that something was moving.

"Keep your eyes up ahead, Katrijn, just don't look back." Her d?on spoke calmly and slowly.

Her mind fell blankly at his words before swiftly piling thoughts together: thoughts Katrijn forced aside only just. She stumbled loudly, cursing, thinking quickly to the stupidity of her late-night journey.

"What is it, Jor? It's not," she paused and her paper dry tongue licked across her lips as she continued moving forward, eyes trained ahead with great discipline. "It's not...robbers, summat like that?" Katrijn nearly sounded hopeful, and they both knew there was some money stuffed down Katrijn's shoes to throw at robbers.

"No," Jor replied, "That en't a person's d?on, Kat. Just keep looking ahead. Don't look back. Don't run. Just keep moving."

A long howl broke the night crisply behind them now - mournful and full-throated. Katrijn shrieked and her d?on became as stone-like as her own stiffeningly jolty movements. Everything became very cold, very quickly.

"Run! Run Kat!"

The call came loudly from Katrijn's side. She had frozen in place, eyes wide. She turned wonderingly as her oldest brother Nicholas jumped from behind her and grabbed onto her arm.

"Nicholas!" A breathless cry, her d?on took to the air as a hawk and began shrieking quick, panicked cries.

"Just run, Kat!" The hand gripped her tighter and forced her to sprint ahead - the pace of her brother, half dragging her, half propelled by the fear - a panting, scuffling noise from behind seeming to get closer and louder.

Katrijn fell heavily and cried out as Nicholas's relentless grip twisted her shoulder painfully, tearing her back to her feet, keeping her running ahead. Her breath came shorter and her sides began aching dully. Her knees felt warm and she knew they were scraped and running bloody from the rocks she'd fallen on.

A loud bark - just behind them.

"What is it, Nicholas?" Her voice sounded shriveled, arching in all the wrong spots from the fear and the breathlessness.

"Just...don't look!" Nicholas called loudly and just as breathless, a step ahead of her, pulling still, running still. His d?on, a great husky dog, whimpered lowly in front of them both, tongue lolling, but she was setting the pace - pulling even Nicholas along. His grunts attested to the pain it caused them both and kept the husky continually misstepping to fall back a pace.

Fear broke through the adrenaline and the slight comfort of having Nicholas guiding her, and Katrijn screamed again now, loudly. She ached and she was scared and she couldn't keep up with Nicholas. She fell again, her d?on dropping heavily from the air with a thud against the ground below him. The screaming was louder now, filling up the insides of her head and vibrating loudly so that the dark world was missing even the dark image of Nicholas at her side. The twisting, pulling, strength of his grip had left her arm. Suddenly alone again, Katrijn clutched her arms around herself, screaming breathlessly, gasping tearful noises gurgling from some ancestral and terrified knowledge she held deep inside.

"Kat! Kat!" Nicholas was calling. Nicholas had turned around. Nicholas was reaching for her. Nicholas would protect her.

But his calls stopped suddenly. The scuffling noises stopped. The sounds of running, of pounding heart and thumping head and catching breath stopped. Katrijn's own screams had stopped.

The young girl looked up and into the deep blood-livid eyes of the beast as its hot breath fell moistly against her face.

Black Shuck. She knew the beast. The demon beast of the moors. She knew the fangs that dripped burning saliva now against her shins. The fangs which would soon meet against the soft flesh of her throat. The beast which would destroy its victims in the deep hours of the night. Victims who looked into its eyes.

Katrijn was lost already.

"Nicholas would know later there weren't nothing to do once that girl looked 'im in the eyes. But that point he was just as scared as shit - just a same as she was. So he kept running, it's him now what we get the story from. Only maybe he never forgave hisself what happened to his sister - because he couldn't carry her on, or he should've stopped her before she even begun going out alone. He knew better all right, just as well as she did. But he didn't have to pay for it the same."

"How'd he get away though?" The brave cousin's voice came from underneath his cap. Stefen smiled, undoubtedly the cousin hadn't meant to admit he'd been listening the whole time.

"He made it to St. Mary's in South Creake. That's the trick to beating that Black Shuck - and I shouldn't even be saying his name what it'll bring him out. Every last one of us is right stuck into danger tonight because of me!" Stefen beamed. "Course he don't do the waterways, either. It's the land-folks as have to worry more'n us, but most of them know, too, so they got a Church building set up in their town where they run to if Black Shuck come in, and they don't look him in the eye like Katrijn did - that was dumb of her."

"I think she was brave going out alone! And all's she wanted was a bit of attention from that boy she liked." The spiteful cousin spoke in defense and Stefen wondered if she didn't have her own vision set on one of her mates. "Besides, your dumb stories are just made up rubbish. Drain-cloggings with polish, is right! You're a tale-teller at's all, Stefen, and some day I hope you get in trouble for it!"

But Stefen just smiled widely and stroked his d?on's head. Tale-teller or not, no one would dare sneak away from the boats tonight. Not on his watch. 


	5. Second Measure: 4:4 Common Time

"Well, some of it I'll admit did come to me secondhand. But I researched it all and I'm pretty certain on it. I wouldn't lie to you, ma'am. Lying doesn't count, you know, in the end...it doesn't keep you..." Feddin looked away a moment to check his eyes before finishing, "...satisfied." 


	6. Kutsumono or The Phantom Thief

_A tale from Nippon. Translated from a large series of images._

Sumizuri-e _technique on_ Washi, _unfinished. Original artist unknown._  
_Restorative project funded by an endowment from the Foundation's Board member Edward Coulter._

_The full series of images appears in a collection of _washi, _Nipponese paper. The inks and art style suggest the story was produced with intent for a woodcut. Project scholars suggest the woodcut was intended for a small shrine in a growing village in the Northern regions of Nippon._

_Note: Translation provided through practical means of research, translator's notes follow the text._

There is a place somewhere in the hilliest part of Nippon where all the ghosts and spectres get caught if they pass by it. A strange young woman sits outside on a chair, her beauty and her long black hair sometimes entices the men of nearby villages to stroll past her on a casual walk. Her silver-black mockingbird dæmon flaps softly at their d?ons if they try to get close to her, but he never calls out. She rocks slowly back and forth so her shadow moves slightly if there is sun, though her shadow dances just as mysteriously in the light of a full moon. She is one of the _toorima_, a phantom. Known throughout the village as Kutsumono, some people consider her a goddess or a devil and bring small trinkets of fortune or luck or health to her porch where they sit for many months, or she brings them inside while no one watches. Sometimes, if they are particularly shiny things, her dæmon will smash them before the benefactor even steps away, but no one knows if it is because the woman is irritated or enjoys breaking the things. She does all this without a sound.

Now in this same village lived a small girl named Hayaiko. Her younger sister, Kikumaigo, disappeared the previous month and her parents had wept together each night since the girl's disappearance. their misery left Hayaiko alone, and alone she was sad. Hayaiko and her dæmon had set up a small memorial in their family room and would light incense in the growing cold before retreating back to the _kotatsu_. She prayed for the return of her younger sister, but as her parents began ignoring Hayaiko completely to mourn for her lost sister, she and her dæmon decided to go find Kikumaigo on their own.

Hayaiko packed her school bag with a few snacks and a length of rope, while her dæmon pushed the items around as a mouse so she could fit in a scarf as well. The rope was in case her sister had fallen into a crevasse in the earth or she needed to cross an unsteady bridge, as they knew things like this often happened on an adventure. She put on an old pair of school shoes she wore now for play, and left her parents behind while they slept, knowing they would wake and despair for Kikumaigo as always, but would not realize their elder daughter had left.

Hayaiko quickly decided to walk to the edge of the town to see the _toorima_. As much of the village knew, the woman there was capable of casting deep curses on people. Hayaiko knew that her sister would not normally leave her family as such and that perhaps the_ toorima_ had stolen away the younger girl. Hayaiko hoped she could bargain with the _toorima_ for her sister's release. She hoped to not be lonely again, and hoped to no longer see their parents cry.

She walked there in good time and reached the place where the _toorima_ lived before even the sun had risen more than a few stretching rays above the nearby hills. As a bargaining piece for their sister, Hayaiko and her dæmon had together silently snuck into their parents room while they slept, and stolen away a necklace with pieces of dangling gold and deep purple amethysts. Kikumaigo had deeply admired the necklace, and often been scolded for touching the piece around her mother's neck when the woman wore it.

Though they had arrived early, the girl and her dæmon saw the beautiful _toorima_ sitting as always outside, with her silvery-black mockingbird dæmon nearby. Though Hayaiko was scared, she walked straight to the woman and bowed to her in greeting. Her dæmon took on the form of a small winter bird as a sign of respect for the woman.

Kutsumono smiled kindly at this demonstration and in one quick motion was silently at the doorway to her house, beckoning for Hayaiko to follow her inside. Hayaiko knew it was dangerous, but the _toorima_ smiled kindly and her mockingbird dæmon hopped pleasantly over the doorstep and past the _doma_ inside. Hayaiko was quickly warmed by the friendliness of the pair and stepped happily inside past the woman.

Still wrapped in the happiness of her reception to the house, and familiar with traditional practices of Nippon, Hayaiko slowly removed first one shoe and then the other, noticing a place for her footwear at the end of a row of many, many, similarly sized shoes at the side of the _doma_. She quickly and silently put one shoe in line, happy to join the order of the many pairs already in the line. But as she placed the second shoe in its spot and put her foot down, the silent happiness which had been so comforting to Hayaiko vanished in an instant, and she froze in place as the sounds of many young voices screaming in horrific cacophony at once came to her ears.

"Welcome home." Kutsumono's voice was swiftly and pleasantly at the young girl's ear, and she gasped to hear such a happy voice against the many unsettling screams coming from further within the house. Hayaiko looked again at the line of many shoes and was suddenly very scared as she realized the children crying out from within the house were the owners of those shoes.

"Kikumaigo!" She called loudly from her place frozen in the entryway.

"Run! Leave! You will be caught!" Many voices cried out at once, many more continued encouraging her to run. Kutsumono laughed loudly and beckoned the frightened girl to follow her, but follow she did not.

Hayaiko turned to slide the doorway open and run from the _toorima_, but found no door behind her. Her dæmon, still shaped as a bird, let out frantic chirping noises, a call that came back to them from the _toorima_'s mockingbird. Hayaiko was frightened further as the voices of the crying children began echoing from Kutsumono herself, the same cries of unhappiness emitting from the beautiful mouth that had welcomed them, smiling, inside this house.

Hayaiko looked again to find the door, and then pounded the wall behind her which would break under neither her fist nor the full weight of her body. Kutsumono watched and smiled, and the volume of the children's voices increased as her mouth widened to let out more of the pained cries.

"You may not leave here barefoot." Hayaiko heard the same sweet voice from the _toorima_ as before. She sprang quickly to her shoes, but realized they would not move from where she had placed them. Her shoes were stuck fast to the ground, and she tried the other pairs and realized they, too, were stuck fast. Kutsumono laughed again, and her mockingbird dæmon joined in.

"Follow me here, and be stuck just as your shoes are." Kutsumono told them, and Hayaiko knew suddenly that if she stepped into the room with the _toorima_ she would never leave the house. But there was no where else to go, and Hayaiko could not leave without shoes.

Reluctantly, Hayaiko was about to step up further into the main room of the house and admit her defeat, but her dæmon made a swift screeching noise and dove through the air as a large osprey into the interior of the house. The girl screamed as he pulled at their bond and the pain nearly drove her to put a foot up and be stuck eternally, but she somehow resisted. Through the pain she heard a loud scream, and then the pain ended as her dæmon crashed heavily at her feet, two glamorously embroidered golden slippers - much too large for Hayaiko's small feet - grasped in his talons.

Hayaiko needed no encouragement, and quickly pushed her feet into the slippers. She turned and ran swiftly through the now open door that waited for her. The _toorima_ screamed loudly behind her, but she did not dare turn to see if she was being chased. The girl ran quickly, and fearfully, back to her parents and back toward her house. She ran still as she approached a small stone bridge, the screams of the _toorima_ and all the kidnapped children still rang loudly in her ears.

Across the bridge she continued running. Hayaiko stripped the golden slippers from her feet without stopping and threw them into the swift stream below. The howling noises stopped as she reached the other side of the bridge, and she slowed down to catch her breath, realizing suddenly that the noise had followed her only as long as she wore the golden slippers. The _toorima_ was not following her, Hayaiko had left her as caught in the house as the many children she'd kidnapped. Kutsumono could not leave the house barefoot and Hayaiko had stolen the only pair of shoes not stuck fast to the ground. No one would ever leave the house again.

Hayaiko and her dæmon returned to their parents, now knowing the truth of what had happened to Kikumaigo, but unable to tell, and unable to rescue their younger sister. Kikumaigo was truly lost to them. Hayaiko lit more incense for her sister, and prayed.

((Translator's notes: Rough translations follow for some of the names and words.

Toorima, "phantom thief, phantom killer"  
Kutsumono, "shoes, singularity"  
Hayaiko, "Child, fast, quick"  
Kikumaigo, "lost child, to hear"  
Kotatsu: a family table heated underneath, popular gathering place in colder seasons doma: An area like an entry-way of compacted earth, where guests and occupants may remove footwear ima: The planked main room, raised higher than the doma, where shoes are to be removed

_This translator adds: some oddities of language arose during the restorative and historical documentation of the "Phantom" project. All possible measures were taken to ensure the accurate representation of the tale._

_Unofficial notes: Some members of the translation team believe that the end of the story would have the elder sister offering the amethyst and gold necklace to the "gods" of the Nipponese and that the young girl does return. A tale with some similar themes appears in a small fishing village in the outskirts of the Michinoku region of Nippon, with the ending as such. However, the document remains unfinished. The poor condition of the final panels and the lack of notes to accompany those particular panels leave the translation efforts to end with only the prayer the elder sister offers._


	7. Rite of Passage

"Well, I will, but you can't be _mean_ about it this time." Victoria emphasised. "The ones I know, they're more like one that gets passed down like, maybe something you'd tell to your family, but I don't really know any with ghouls and phantoms like yours had."

"Dull-wit" one of the girls to her left murmured something further, but Victoria wasn't bothered by her. Her dæmon clicked his tongue and made a small noise as if to say any further comments would mean trouble.

The girls to the left of their circle were enemies, the ones crowded around were friends. Both groups equally large and both weren't letting her sleep. Exams were the following morning.

She'd been told as she brushed up for the night: it was a school ritual of some sort to stay awake telling ghost stories all night before the final exams of the year, but really Victoria wanted to get back to bed, rest up for tomorrow, dream of seeing her family again back west. Exams ending meant finally, finally being away. Away from the boarding school, and the club meetings, and the constant theft of bath towels. She was fairly certain her bedroom slippers were inherited from one of the upper-classmen, but they'd switched feet and turned dingy and scuffed around the old wooden dormitory floors so often it didn't matter much that her own - likely identically worn pair - were now the property of someone else.

"Something from your grandfather!" One of her friends chirped, her dæmon chittering away just as excitedly on her shoulder as she guessed the origin of the soon-to-be-heard story.

"Not that _Skraeling_ garbage," an enemy, dripping with obvious distaste. "And don't give us that 'cultural' nonsense, either, you've no real claim you're only half!"

"Oh Shut up, Killiah!" She'd had enough from the enemies. Victoria's small lemur dæmon jumped the space between the two groups in an instant and had the other girl's canary pinned against the hope chest at the end of the couch. The girl looked stunned for an instant, then turned as if she were bored. Her dæmon was released and fled quietly to her breast.

Victoria had dealt far too often in this school with being "half." It was her grandfather - her Skraeling grandfather - who had taught her to be proud of both halves.

They would walk out through the field where the wild horses grazed and his great golden eagle dæmon would fly above, looping over, gazing over, cherishing and taking in the land with one sharpened and expansive view. And her grandfather would tell her pieces of history, pieces of his childhood, pieces about the grandmother she'd never known, pieces of knowledge and of languages. Always pieces. And the pieces she'd value, because even though sometimes they seemed so distant and sometimes the magnetism which related them thinned, every one of them still was a piece of the grandfather she loved.

He'd been the wind behind her education, guiding her always to something better, she was certain. And she'd envied his great golden dæmon when her own Tellic had settled without wings to fly with. But he'd calmed her tears and told her that everyone's feathers could be different, as long as your dreams and your spirit and your love of life continued soaring that was all that mattered.

So she'd never minded being "half." Except perhaps the other half, from the family she'd never met save on a few short visits with her father to fund her education.

But even knowing the encouragement of her grandfather, she was ready to take her tired wings back home. She was ready to graduate. Top of her class. She was ready to shout at the enemies with as much disdain as her proud frame could hold. She was ready to soar, and her direction was going home.

"I did hear the story from my grandfather," Victoria returned her attention to her friends, now knowing what she'd say. "But It's a little odd, it's more middle-Americas, south of the New Danish territories, old. He traveled there a few times, made some friends there, they'd bargained photography equipment off him for tobacco or - well," she gestured, "something like that and he gets back there a few times a year now."

"Drugs!"

Enemy, of course.

Victoria shrugged, why not?

* * *

The warrior chief had four sons, and for this he was saddened. Although his first three sons were strong and brave, they had been chosen by the priests and could not join with their father in protecting the people of the city. They would instead offer sacrifices and calculate the fates by the stars and take part in tournaments of the great ball game for the glory of the gods. The second-eldest son himself had been a sacrifice to the gods in the last tournament, and through the bloodshed of the captain of the winning team - and the joining of his dæmon with the gods as she disappeared into the still air at the height of the temple steps - the people had been granted great mercy and were blessed with good rainfall and fair weather and plenty of food and profit for the city. Even the invaders had not come that year. Yet still, one son remained to the warrior chief, and this, the youngest of his four sons, would be where his glory laid.

The youngest son had been brought up under strict guidance by his father. He was born small and had been sickly as an infant, and his parents had been fearful and angry that they had somehow displeased the gods. But his mother had fed him the milk from the jungle cats to make him strong, and his father had tied the bones from birds in bands around his ankles to make him light-footed, and his brothers had fought with him and trained him to fight back to use strength and speed together.

The eldest son had taught the youngest to hunt, and from that he'd learned the tracks of animals and the scent of the jungle and the deep viscousness of the beasts that lived there - some even disguising themselves as harmless-looking lizards or bugs. The second-eldest before his death had taught the youngest to play in the great ball games, strengthening muscles and reflexes working with his dæmon and seeing teammates as resources. And the third-eldest had taught him prayer and duty, teaching and re-teaching the history of their proud people, telling of the invasion of the light peoples under the evil god Napoleon, and the need to keep the people safe.

And his father tested him often, sometimes asking the boy to climb difficult cliff faces along the gulf, sometimes sending him on errands with important messages to sprint up the temple steps with, sometimes telling him to assist in the punishment of criminals after the guards had left them hidden deep in the labyrinth of muck-filled channels below the city. And the youngest son would obey his father's commands.

And so the father was confident in his youngest son on the day he was sent deep into the heart of the city to receive his trial and become, through Rite of Passage, a protector of the city.

A Rite of Passage ceremony was common to most of the cultures along the Peninsula and through the isthmus and this tribe was no different. There would be danger, and testing, and not all the boys would survive to become men, but the ones who did would be honored and blessed by the priests. These would become the warriors of the people and the city, and would protect it from the outsiders who had arrived.

For his rite of passage, the youngest son was covered in rich white and red paint as his mother drew lines of protection, luck, and honor in thick streaks over his body. He padded himself down with chalk gathered from the cliff faces and looped his sole weapon - a knife he'd carved from the leg bone of an animal one of his brothers had helped him capture and sacrifice for this occasion - in a belt around his waist.

And his father told him, "You will find your place today." These were the makings and signs of one not yet a warrior, yet still his father was proud.

But the youngest son was not alone in his trial. Many boys from the city had been sent by their parents to join the warriors, but the youngest son alone had the greatest challenge; it was his father who stood over the boys and would test them all as chief of the warriors, and the youngest son was quickly realised as the smallest of all the boys. His dæmon had not yet settled while many of the boys surrounding him stood side-by-side with their own dæmons, sure in their abilities with the form their dæmon had taken.

The boys would be confronted with three challenges, the warrior chief told them: one of skill, one of strength, and the final challenge of courage.

"For your first test, you will destroy the invader at our gates." The warrior chief spoke and pointed toward the eastern gate of the city.

The boys ran and reached the great mottled grey stone gates to find the corpse of a white man leaned back, supported by the stones.

"These men come at the will of the evil god Napoleon!" The tribal leader pointed, "They must be killed! Do this to protect the people here, show me your methods."

A huge number of weapons were laid out along the bare road before the boys at some distance from the corpse: hammers of enormous size and spears and metal-tipped arrows poisoned with the deadly secretions of the vibrant jungle frogs.

Many boys chose the hammer. Because of its size the hammer was more likely to hit the target corpse, and needed only strength to get there.

Some boys chose the bow and arrow for its accuracy potential, and for the practice they'd done with the weapon.

And a few chose the spear for its weight distribution in passing the distance. If they could still, their dæmons would change form and fly as great birds beside the weapon shafts, nudging the spears to hit the target.

But the youngest son chose none. He waited until the other boys had tried with their weapons, either hitting or failing to hit the target, sucking, popping noises coming from the impacts to the body.

The youngest son waited until all the boys had tried their best. No arrows or spears or hammers remained on the street for him. He walked to the corpse and took out the small jagged knife he'd made and cut quickly alone the throat of the corpse.

"What is this practice?" The elder asked.

"This is the best way to kill this invader man." The boy said. "He had no arms and no aide. See how the hammers have broken the stone gate he leans against and cracked the sacred drawings which show our gods. See how our good weapons of distance lie blunted or broken by their impact to the hard stone and earth, needing mending and men to refuel their poisoned tips. Yet my knife has only cut through flesh, and is resharpened easily by my own hands."

The warrior chief nodded and pointed out nearly twenty boys from the group, including the youngest son. The others were sent back to their parents. They would become gatherers of the jungle, fishers of the river, crafters of the markets, searchers of the stars, priests of the gods, and hunters of the land, but they would not become protectors of the people.

"You will now face off in pairs and show the strength of your people." The warrior chief said.

This was a test of wrestling, and one meant to weed out the smaller and weaker among the boys. But though he was small, the youngest son had been made strong in both mind and body. As the other boy's dæmon changed into a great jungle cat, the youngest son's changed into a vicious-looking beetle. She ran deep into the fur of the beast where she quickly snapped the piercing jaws of of the beetle into the soft flesh of the cat's neck. The great cat roared, and the boy across from him stumbled. In this moment the battle was decided. The youngest son catapulted himself from the rocks he'd backed onto and sprang at the belly of his competitor, knocking him over. He quickly locked the other boy's arms into a bundle and twisted until the other boy cried out in pain. The match was won.

The elder nodded again, but now only four boys moved onto the final stage - again the youngest son was among those chosen, but many of the winners of the previous fights were left behind still. They stopped at the edge of the jungle.

"The first test of our people was to see how you would think as a warrior. The second test of our people was to understand that you could win as a warrior. The final test is to know that you have your own power and can rise above the people to protect them, this is the true courage of a man."

For this moment, you four have trained your whole lives. For this moment, your families are watching and waiting, and your people are needing you to step there, as a tool of the people, and to rise above what limits and faults you may have and to do what is your duty, and this is courage. To have your life in place only to protect others and show no fear for this, this is courage. To understand that the people of this city need you as a weapon and as a defense, and to believe in this, this is courage. To find your place." The warrior chief spoke.

A line of warriors appeared from the dense jungle at both sides of the path, paving its edges in muscles and faded paint lines.

"The final test!" The warrior chief shouted, and the men at his sides yelled with him in cheers and shook their fists in the air.

The youngest son walked first down the path, followed by the remaining three boys. Wet blotches appeared against the dried paint on his skin as he passed the closing leaves of the jungle, training his vision ahead. And the space in front of them cleared.

A structure, buried deeply in the ground with enormous wooden wheels and maneouvering objects surrounding its base, held the open space like a spear stuck through the jungle in front of the boys, scarring the ground and uprooting all foliage from around itself. Supports of wooden beams braked against its sides, crisscrosses forming a carapace like a giant wooden beetle. And from its center rose an enormously thick, strenuously towering single log. Carvings of the calendar dates ran the length of its surface. And at the very highest point at the top of the towering structure two short logs laid down in an 'x' pattern, making the whole thing resemble an unnaturally organized nest at the top of a large tree in a way that made the assembled hulk even more distant, even more menacing from the familiar jungle.

"This is courage." The warrior chief spoke again, "Find your place." And he pointed at a series of rungs which ran from the bottom to the top of the central "spear."

The youngest son did not hesitate. He was quickly at the base of the structure, hand over hand progressing to the top. He did not look down, his vision was trained still: ahead. The towering structure swayed beneath his movement, then at an uneven pace as two more boys followed after him. A fall from this height would be death, and the youngest son reached the nest on top. Four ropes with four wooden handles like bars waited tied to the crosspieces of the nest.

Seeing their use, he unwound one of the bars and lowered it over the edge of the tower's crosspieces. The other two boys began following his example as the fourth started the ascent up the ladder.

The youngest son lowered himself down the rope, hand over hand again, but now in the opposite direction. The tower still wobbled back and forth. And the other two boys again followed his example. He hooked his feet over the wooden bar and swung upside down, fearlessly from the towering nest. And he twisted so that he stared over the entire city - an enormous gash cut from the jungle, stone and wood and paint. The dome of the observatory, the gulf beyond, the columns of the dead, the small shapes that must be the houses of the people. And he knew his father was proud.

The tower began to spin, pushed at its base by the warriors there. Slowly, it turned at first, and then quicker. Drums played on the ground below, and the smoke of a fire reached even to where the youngest boy hung by his legs - upside down, spinning at deeper and deeper spread from the tower's center as the inertia increased, going higher, farther from the tower. He spread his arms.

"This is courage" The vast blazing beauty of the jungle spun a dazzling green before his eyes as the tower spun, then the gash of the city, the brilliance of the jungle again. And the warrior chief's voice echoed loudly in the brilliance. The youngest son's heart raced and he felt flushed with the view before him. "This is courage!" The warrior chief shouted, and wild calls began in rhythm with the drumming. "This is courage!" Another shout.

But it was not the warrior chief's voice the youngest son heard, it was the voice of his father. "Become a tool of this city, this is courage." It told him. "You live only to protect others, this is courage." It told him. "Rise above the people so that you will see them all, only from there, only above all others can you fold your arms around to protect them, this is courage. Find your place." It told him.

And he believed.

He looked again over the city as the tower spun. A portion of the jungle cut away, skirting at the edges of the cliffs, the great blue gulf, the flashing green of the jungle.

Find your place.

His dæmon flew dizzyingly near the swinging ropes of the tower, a bird of paradise. A bird of the jungle. She would never change again.

Find your place.

And the youngest son spread his arms further, and stretched his legs out, and yelled wildly with the bird-calls from his d?on, and flew. He had found his place.

* * *

"He _dies?_" Her friend squeaked.

Victoria blinked in the tired way where most things become difficult to react to. "Well, maybe, I mean, it might be like that." She yawned widely. "I always thought he flew away like a bird, just like his dæmon, I thought that was beautiful. But, that's true. I guess you could take it that way, too." She'd never considered anything like that before.

The circle of enemies began giggling while her friends clapped, despite her confusion. "What's so funny over there?" Victoria demanded, defensive and irritable at once from lack of sleep.

"Nothing, _'half'_, only _half-certain_ is what!" More giggling. "Half a story!"

Victoria and her dæmon stood to leave the common room.

"And you're wrong," Killiah added haughtily, "At home that _would_ be a ghost story because they'd lock you up until you rot and your spirit would get a hex stuck through it and you'd haunt the cathedral in Geneva forever as punishment with all that heresy!" She laughed again, more cruelly, "you're just lucky that none of us take that stupid Skraeling nonsense to be anything someone _really_ believes, always lucky, but even if your father is rich he still sent you away he's so embarrassed by you." She sneered, but her dæmon was hiding against her side, obviously still aware of Victoria's earlier dominance.

Victoria wasn't dealing with it again tonight. More sickening than the threats, _Geneva wasn't home._

_How many fights do I have to win before then?_ She wondered and crept back to her room, back under her sheets despite the protests from her friends. _Whenever it is, whenever I win for real, that's when I'll tell them a real Skraeling story._

The thought filled her as she melted into the darkness. _That's when I'll really make their blood boil._


	8. Third Measure: Fermata

"A lot of terrible things are happening in what you've written, Feddin."

He didn't respond at first, instead focusing himself on the tax rates for canal usage throughout Brytain. The tutor's pretty little moth fluttered impatiently down to land on the pages of the journal.

"Feddin?"

"I told you it would be true. Situations, events, that kind of thing," he began muttering but picked up volume quickly as she frowned at him. "Life, that's all."


	9. The Cave

**Incident Report**

Stolen property:

One (1) facility storybook

Item description:

The storybook was meant for children, and so was accompanied by many pictures. The book was last noted in a toy bin in the activity room among a collection of similar books given to the children for pleasure reading while waiting to see one of the Station's doctors. It is thought the contents of the book in question are neither revealing nor marring to the Station or its partnerships.

Further Notes:

Station Project Alpha abandoned due to insufficient resources and management. Facility staff terminated.

Usable supplies catalogued and entered into storage.

* * *

There once lived a young girl on the side of a mountain with her elderly parents. The young girl was good and kind to her parents, and she did her chores and walked to the nearby spring for water each day. She lived peacefully like this for some time, and her parents loved her dearly.

One day, while walking with a bucket to gather water from the spring, the girl noticed her dæmon had taken on a form she was unfamiliar with.

"Why have you changed, so?" she asked him.

"Because I can. Because I was curious." He answered her.

The girl thought this over while she continued her walk to the spring. But as she approached, the girl saw the pool she meant to fill her bucket from had dried up, and she became saddened.

"If you are still curious, climb to the top of this spring and discover if it has run dry above," and she bade her dæmon to clamber up the rocks above her, formed as a small rodent with a stringy tail.

Her dæmon had not gone far before the girl felt a sudden pull at her heart and called him back.

"Why does it hurt when you climb this hillside?" The girl asked her dæmon, but he did not know the answer. Her dæmon was unable to see the top of the spring for her, but the girl did not want to return without water for her parents.

"Maybe if we go together, it will be possible." Said her dæmon.

The girl agreed and began climbing the rocks with her dæmon to find the source of the spring. As they reached a point nearly halfway up the rocky hillside, she noticed a large rock blocking a hole from which water would flow.

"Surely this is where the water should come from," the girl spoke to her dæmon.

"Perhaps an animal has made its home in this hole and stopped the water inside for itself." He replied.

"Or perhaps there has been an earthquake to block the village from having water," she suggested instead.

The girl pulled and pulled, but was unable to move the rock away.

"Why will this rock not move when I pull on it?" she questioned.

"You are not strong enough alone. Maybe I can help by pushing from the other side." Her dæmon said, and she agreed. He took on another new form, a small insect, and climbed into the hole to get behind the rock. On the other side, he became a large ram and pushed so the girl was able to pull the rock away. Together they freed the water, which began forming a pool again.

"What lovely work we have done together!" The girl rejoiced. And after filling her bucket with water, she and her dæmon returned home to find both their parents smiling happily, ready to receive them home. The girl told her parents of the rock they had moved from the spring and how the water had been allowed to flow again.

"What good you have done for so many!" Her mother rejoiced, "for other people from the village use that well also, and would be saddened and troubled to see it dried up." With great happiness her mother baked good fresh bread and soup for the family and together they dined at their small cottage table.

Life continued again for the family, and the girl was nearly thirteen when she noticed the well dried up again as she went to gather water for the family.

"We know how to fix this, now," the girl's dæmon said confidently and jumped onto her shoulder as a bird. Together they climbed up the rocks to find the water's source once again. However, when they reached the place halfway up the steep hill where they had once before moved a rock, there was a hole but nothing else. The water was not being blocked. And so the girl suggested they climb to the very top.

"Perhaps the source of the water has moved since last we were here." Her dæmon said.

"Or perhaps this is not the true source of the water, but we only thought it to be." The girl replied.

They continued to the top of the hill in silence. When they arrived at the top the girl looked up bidden by a chirp from her dæmon to suddenly notice an enormous bird sitting on the rocks. Underneath the bird, a small pool of water trickled, and the girl realized this was where the water was truly flowing from.

"You should throw a rock at it to make the bird move." Her dæmon advised. But the girl was scared.

The bird was very large and brightly colored with plumes of brilliant red and streaks of violet, like rays of the sunset such as she'd never seen before from her mountain home. She stared at the bird in awe of his beauty, wishing suddenly and instantly that she would have such brightly colored fabrics to sew into dresses. Each feather of the bird's ample plumage ended in a small globule of some bright and eye-catching substance, like a glass tear drop, she thought she would wear upon her wrists as a bangle to reflect and splinter the sun's rays as the bird did. She reasoned that perhaps the bird was a witch's dæmon and knew she should not speak to a creature like that for fear of bringing anger and torment onto her family from the witch he belonged to.

"But I must try something," the girl said, "or else my mother will have no water to heat for soup, and my father will have nothing to drink when he has finished tending to the sheep." The girl stepped bravely forward.

"Bird?" She called, but the bird did not respond.

"He's not a witch's dæmon at all, then," said her dæmon. "We should scare him away so that we may fill our bucket and leave."

"We should not scare him," the girl replied, "rather we should ask him to leave this place so that the water may flow freely for all people to use the well. Without the well, many people will have no water."

"Bird?" The girl called again.

"Let's scare him instead of asking." Her dæmon goaded. "If we scare him away he will fly quickly. And if he flies quickly he will surely leave behind many brightly colored feathers for us to gather"

At his suggestions the girl began to imaginge how beautifully she might look with the gorgeous sun-red feathers in a hat, or adding a broach of the violet plumes to wear with her favorite dress. Then the girl considered how others might admire a hat or broach made of these lovely feathers, and how proud she would feel if others would stare as she walked through the village like this. The girl nodded to her dæmon.

At once her dæmon took on a form she had never before seen, so hideous was he. He stood on four legs and had large claws and a hooked beak for a nose. He slobbered heavily and his skin was ashen and rough to the touch. The girl laughed loudly as her dæmon continued becoming more ugly, puffing out his cheeks into a snarl, he changed again and added webbed wings and spines down his back. As a final gesture he took on a long and pointed tail that ended in a tuft of vicious-looking spikes. His skin became slimy to the touch and the girl clapped her hands in awe of their imagination.

"We will scare the bird now!" She exclaimed. "He will drop so many feathers for us and we will wear them into the village and people will admire how fine we appear!"

Her dæmon agreed and let out a crackling screech that must have been native to the form he took on, so piercing and painful it sounded.

"Should we do it now?" Her dæmon asked and the girl nodded while looking at the bird's feathers with unabashed desire.

Her gargoyle-dæmon took off from her at once, shrieking and flapping and slashing air at the bird, who quickly backed away from his place and took flight. His great beauteous flaring red wings beat the air around them as he flew away with a backward look to the place where he had been sitting, and he cried out remorsefully in a beautiful voice.

The girl and her dæmon stamped their feet together in disappointment, for the bird had left no feathers. But three small rounded eggs remained behind him, immersed in the water of the pooled well source.

"He left no beautiful feathers for us!" The girl said and quickly began crying. She sat down on the ground and waited for her dæmon to come to her with comfort as he often did, formed as a sheep, a familiar reminder of their family. But her dæmon did not come to her.

"Why do you not care for me in my misery?" The girl cried out to him.

"I do care for you," her dæmon replied and came closer to nuzzle her leg, but the girl backed away quickly from his hideous form.

"You must change from that form, just as the bird was scared, so am I."

But her dæmon did not change form, and with sudden realization the girl knew he would change no longer, and for the entirety of their life, as he appeared now before her is how people would see them.

The girl was horrified but thought quickly. "We will gather these eggs the beautiful bird has left behind. They will hatch into more beautiful birds and with those feathers we will disguise you and walk through the town like that. Then people will admire us."

They were saddened, but encouraged to try out this plan, for the feathers were beautiful and three birds of that size could easily provide enough feathers for them to both wear.

But the girl had forgotten her original purpose, and when they had succeeded in moving the sun-colored bird from his roost, the spring had begun to flow again. The girl ran to the pool of water only to realize her mistake. Her dæmon shrieked horribly and she looked up in time to see the three eggs washing together over the side of the rocky hill and down below.

"Quickly! Catch them!" She called to her dæmon, but his wings were put on for show of ugliness and could not carry his form.

And so it was that the girl remorsed by the side of the spring as what had become her only chance at beauty tipped slowly, and fell over the rocks, to be crushed by water and hillside below. The girl began crying again, and her dæmon came close to comfort her again.

"No." The girl said in anger. "You may not touch me again, your ideas have made you as you are now, and your ugliness cannot be disguised. For this we must walk in shame together for the rest of our life."

The girl never returned home to her parents, her shame was so great. She hid in the hills near their village and lived in a cave, where she was contented to never be seen nor see another person. And with only her dæmon, who she hated for his ugliness, the girl grew old and forevermore remained hiding in the cave.

* * *

Theft report filed by:

Station Nurse Grace Hudgings

Updates:

_Storybook found in possession of Dr.Pahlbod and confiscated from home of said person. Malicious intent not assumed._

_Nurse Hudgings will be transferred to current facility construction site._

_Dr. Pahlbod currently in courts pending reprimand. Following court actions, doctor is to be briefed and dismissed from further involvement in Station operations._

_Court decisions to be filed with report thereafter._

Signed:

_MC_

_See Station blueprints, file 34: Shelf A:12, Files 6-39_


	10. Fourth Measure: Allegro

"We traveled a lot when I was younger, the whole family. I think we probably won't travel much more really, not with mum like this now. But we got to see all kinds of amazing things wherever we were. I saw an elephant before, without any fencing to keep her in, that's one reason I think that journal's so special. Because she was dying because some men had hunted her down to cut off her teeth -"

"Tusks."

"Tusks," he corrected in his perfect parroting tactic. It wasn't his English, Feddin would always call them teeth, just like a little kid.

"But she was dying, and you could smell it, it was all over her, flies, and - well and it was very difficult to watch that. But there were good things too, when we still traveled, back before father had made his big deals with the shipping companies and the..." he waved his hands like he'd forgotten the words, "some general board. But we visited St. Petersburg once, and a few other cities around that place. In these cities there were wooden dolls and we loved them so much. And I bought one as a gift from a woman on the streets. I used some money I'd gotten as allowance and I must have run back to the family - sprinted all the distance and we took rotation then opening up the doll, because they did open at the middle, and they were hollow inside with nothing. And you'd open them one after another and I opened up the very last doll and it was very exciting because she was hidden so far inside and she came around directly at my turn like she was meant to."

"And what was there? Inside the last doll?" The tutor took her cue perfectly.

"It was my fortune." He smiled. "It wasn't very accurate, though."

* * *


	11. A Number of Suspicious Filings

A Number of Suspicious Filings Residing in the Local Courthouse Pertaining to Files in the Essex and Greater Shire County Areas over the Past Twelve Months. Interested Parties Must Apply For Reading Permit. 

_Taxes applicable on duplication fees. Fines distributed to the sum of two hundred pounds for unauthorized vending._

**File: 00193**

There was a price for being weak, and as far as Jamie was concerned if it couldn't come out in gold it would come out in red. And purple and green and blue and the delightful mixed shades he'd leave on his brother's faces and legs and rears and anywhere he could land a kick. Or a punch. Fighting was all the same to him, four limbs and free-for-all. There wasn't any honor to the sport, just a lot of yelling and scratching and angry kids. Of course they were even more angry the day after you'd beat them to a pulp - and then it was their mums you'd ireally/i have to avoid.

Jamie was smart enough to keep away from the ones with older siblings, though. He'd twice run stray on that path and wound up bleeding outside Cardinal's College begging help off his then-sweetheart Pammy. Pems, he'd call her.

Still, if you knew you were tougher - if not bigger - than the other kid involved, and knew some older kids from the universities to come in and make bets, the whole thing was worthwhile enough.

**File: 00145**

"That woman with the little bat dæmon?" One of them asked.

"Yeah, her!"

"I seen her once, she got the junk shop up the Bryn Wyr cul-de-sac. Sold a broke heater off to my cousin!" He grinned widely. "Uncle cussed him out on that one."

"What else she got in there then?" Another one of the boys asked.

"It en't nothing, not when you look at it first. But you got to know en't no one so dumb to keep all the stuff 'at's breakin' laws out in the open. You get some authority in there he'll run you up on charges, toss you in the pokey for a night. An she's so old she'd die of the shock in them places."

"Yeah."

The circle quieted a minute, stared intently with disinterest aiming their eyes anywhere but the shop. If anyone were to notice them they'd think mistakenly the young boys were planning on stealing from the street vendor's stall that wafted some mysterious fried sweetbread scent along the road.

"And yer sayin' she's buyin' stuff, too?"

"Yeah."

"So if we steal it from here - "

"We can sell it right back 'fore they catch us with it!" Another boy cut in excitedly.

"Shh!"

"What's it going to be for us, then? You all got to catch a piece in there - jewelry and that type, stuff old ladies are like to sell off when they got no more to eat with and all them family jewels lying around hard as stone and you can't fill bellies on 'em."

**File: 00112**

It wasn't more than fancy to Carleen. She just loved the fun of it, was all. The panic attacks her mother went through each time she'd leave without saying, her father rushing home in a cab to console the others. Her grandmothers would come in from outside the city, and tear up praying and hoping and "Oh it's lucky Lucas isn't alive anymore a thing like this would've stopped his heart!" - ing.

She would run away for attention. When she was very young she'd light fires in waste bins and throw things at her teachers and shout shocking accusations at her parents in public. Once she'd played that she'd had a mental problem and grabbed onto the dæmon of a full-grown man while she and her mum were shopping. The mortification on her mother's face mixed in with the squeaking pathetic mole d?on of the man - it was delight to replay in her memories. The first time she was drunk she was eight. She didn't recall a great deal aside from being sick all over. She did know that she could never stand the taste of bourbon after that.

When she'd hit eleven years old and taken up with a man in his early twenties, from that point on she thought she'd be unable to shock them again. But this was even more successful, and she didn't have to visit the clinics anymore.

Carleen had her heart set on the stage. The men she'd been with had let her into small roles there and she'd try anything to get back.

But Carleen was only infamous in the immediate area - she was the only daughter in a household of eight children. And she was the troublesome one. She'd steal and run away and had tried performing a nursery rhyme on the driver's seat of a traveling company once in effort to join them.

**File: 00234**

She'd found the small grotto of ruins just past the fences outside of town, hidden back in the woodsy areas where men would bring their hunting dogs.

Immediately it was for her and her dæmon alone. Just as she felt the land was beautiful around her, and hers for the viewing, the grotto was all that and more to discover. A quick little stream ran through it, ice cold and tasting deeply off - as if someone had poured in salt and flour in to make it stinging and unpleasant to taste. A patch of small purple flowers would grow by its bend right along the thick grey boulders if summer would ever truly reach the place.

And Ana had taken a special walk down by the shoreline to gather up the white pebbles there, and laid them around to make a large oval in a special sitting place she'd call the "bed."

Many boys had forts, she knew. The boys at school sometimes talked about their forts and the dirty photos they'd hidden there, or the broken bottles of liquor - never with any remaining contents - they'd line up right next to their fort doors. They'd hammer boards together and paint signs and sit in the dirt running toys back and forth in their grimy holes.

But hers was a girl's fortress, and it would be beautiful and feminine. She'd pick flowers and place them on the giant central stone that was cut like one of the trolls from picture books, only lying down for a rest. This was the "table" and became a place of great reverence. No other stone afforded quite the same expansive view as a seat, for although the ring of stones was clearly in ruin, some were still tall enough to hide behind.

**File: 00312**

Daniel hadn't been working more than three months at the paper factory. He started in the winter and the place was always freezing. It wasn't so much that the owner was cheap as that every one of the men working there - and they were all men, the owner had a rotten jealous woman for his wife - was terrified that the whole place would go up in flames the moment someone would light the ever-unused wood burning furnace in the main room.

So the furnace always sat just as cold as the men, and Daniel just got used to wearing a thick scarf and sweater. But his father wasn't rich so it was always the same two sweaters. That's why he had begun to work; his father couldn't afford much otherwise.

So while other kids may have gone to get an education Daniel always worked, and he was reliable and enthusiastic. The owner could not have asked for a better employee. He worked long hours, and cost much less than the skilled laborers, and he always stayed late to help out for a little extra pay.


	12. Gobblers

"That makes five we know of. Anyone know any more?"

Most of the heads shook sideways, eager to get on with it.

"I have a second-cousin who drowned when she was ten," someone said, and then, "Ow!"

"Pillock. That's not the kind of thing we're talking about, we're writing this essay on the real disappearances - the 'Gobblers' stories all the kids are going on about, so it's the untraceable kids we have to look at."

"You think the Professor will really go for this?"

"He has to, it's modern news and that's what his essay will be on."

"But he's publishing in the iBerlin Chronicle/i and the Gobblers stuff is mostly rumor -"

"Then we make it news, stop being so narrow minded and see what the people are talking about!" Clearly the group leader was agitated by the teammates he'd wound up with. "If you lot can't handle finding and reporting on things before other papers print them then you should drop out now. You know how they used to get the best news and sell more papers than the other bloke?"

"They'd send some kid out to the cargo ships before they made it to port to report on the prices of fruit and tea and such."

An accurate response. Mental cursing followed.

"Exactly that." The group leader went on as if he'd asked the question to create such an opportunity for one of the other lowly members to shine.

"And now we're going to do the same - go out and get the full report on what people want to hear, ibefore/i the ships have anchored and the cargo's already unloaded." He beamed to keep the metaphor intact throughout his small talk. As group leader he'd be the one whose name was published as assistant alongside the other Scholars. Empty cargo hold or not, he'd make sure his ship would not be sinking.

--

It was very clear to the other kids straight off that she was foreign. Becki pronounced her 'i's' too long and mostly stumbled when trying to emphasize more than two syllables properly.

"I would like to play with everyone? Yes?" She asked again and smiled her wide trollish smile as far and, she hoped, appealing as it could go. "Ee would leek to play weeth evORyone? Yes?" Her mouth seemed to form the wrong way around the words, as if she'd been using it the wrong way for English since she was born. Which was true enough.

"We en't up to nothin' so you en't welcome here." One of the older boys spit a peach pit from his mouth at the zeppelin docking tower.

And Becki was received much the same way everywhere else in the new city.

Her parents worked - father for a bakery, mother dying fabrics and pressing them. Their hours were long and Becki was lonely. So she'd occupy herself in the ways she'd copy off the local urchins - spitting fruit pits at the docking tower as the older boy had, putting grass strands between her hands and blowing on them and reshifting and blowing again and pulling them tighter until the perfect puff from her mouth resonated just right over the blade and brought a shrill ifweeeep/i noise into the meadow. She didn't have any toys, but rocks were plentiful enough things when you were a young girl with an imagination. She didn't have any friends or company but she had sticks and the ground and could draw people in the dirt to talk to her.

So when the beautiful woman with the golden furred d?on first passed her, walking hand-in-hand with a grubby little boy who looked her own age, if smaller, she hardly noticed. Being so huddled into imagination for company will keep a person from noticing a lot of things.

She did notice the second time though, because she had some impression that the child - a girl this time, dirty and bleeding from one knee - couldn't belong to the beautiful woman in her elegant dress. Yet hand-in-hand they walked. The woman smiled lovingly at the little girl and spoke quietly, and Becki suspected something pleasant was happening.

It was dusk, her parents would be gone until the very last moment of dusk ran into the very first moment of pitch black. Becki wanted to follow them, to see if the woman really was fond of the urchins. Perhaps she had toys for them or treated them to meals. Or maybe by some chance breeding they really were hers. But they were people. And one thing Becki had learned in the new city was that people didn't like her. She was slow, and foreign, and poor.

And she was next.

The beautiful woman approached her just as Becki was shaking the dirt and flaking splinters from her skirt. Becki's little d?on changed into an unnaturally small collie and yipped before Becki realised who had approached.

"Hello." The woman said.

Becki was amazed. Something pleasant was happening, and it was happening to her. The woman smelled softly like lilac - a facial cream or hair perfume in some dainty pale pink tincture one would inevitable be drawn into calling 'lovely' with perfect honesty. Her glamour was enormous, and Becki instantly found herself both overwhelmed and enamoured of the woman in front of her.

"what's your name?" The woman asked softly. Her golden d?on placed a hand on the furry muzzle of the little collie. He yipped again and changed smoothly into a ladybug.

"Sorry," said Becki, "We're not supposed to talk to strangers."

"That's good to know that." The woman smiled. "What a smart child you are!"

Becki smiled tentatively, "But you are nice and you are not a stranger. I have seen you here before, and you are a good person to the other children." The word 'cheelderEN' seemed to put off the woman for a moment as she digested it. "My name is Becki."

"Becki is a lovely name," the golden furred d?on had her ladybug d?on in his hand, climbing around and around in circles while he flipped his arms one way then the other to follow the moment with an impish cuteness to his exaggerated limb-y movements.

The woman laughed softly while she watched her d?on's progress. She leaned closer to Becki, and the scent of the soft glamour Becki had smelled when she first approached wove over her now like lights dancing in her eyes. She inhaled. The woman reached out a hand to her, and Becki didn't hesitate to take it.

The last anyone saw Becki, she was walking to the docks with the woman.

--

"That's the most of the first hand reports we got." The sole female member of the group spoke. She never said much, but what she had said hit the leader hard - despite their weeks of interviews and efforts, they had only the vaguest rumours to go on after the point where the woman takes the children to the dock. Or the van drives them away. Or the black masked trio stuffs them into a sack. Or they simply disappear right before the watcher's eyes. Even the witness reports varied.

From there on, all they had was rumor. The group would need to put a twist on it yet - modern news was the paper, they'd already dedicated too much work to abandon the project now.

--

When the ships arrive, the children are unloaded to a private area in the basement of the warehouse waiting open and cold for them. They're led in two groups - one for girls, one for boys. The adults who lead them look like young teachers in that over tired way of dealing with too many young children at once. They don't pay any attention no matter what the children say to them. But they are strong enough to discipline any of the children daring to step out of line.

The boys and girls are shown their separate toilets. And some of the boys will run off to have a piss after their long time on the ship with only a bucket. The girls usually hold back, because the toilets here aren't much nicer than the buckets, even if the toilets don't rock from side to side or spill gunk and leave traces on their fingers.

And then they're shown to their dormitories. No one tells them much, but they know the people here don't know much either. They tell the children to be quiet, and to get some sleep, because they'll be traveling again tomorrow.

And they split up the group before the children leave again. Even to their young confused eyes the separating is easy to spy. The bigger boys go into one group, the prettiest softest looking girls in another, and everyone left becomes a muddle of concern.

The boys are bargained to the Tartars.

Deep, they travel into the sulfur mines where chains are bound around their ankles so they can't run. And if they try to run, the Tartars will bind a plank of wood along one leg, and lay the boy down on the ground, and bash his leg with a hammer against the plank so that it's broken through and through. And the boy will be in great pain, and his leg may be broken and sore and bleeding for some time. And some have died of the infection from that because the hammers are covered in soot and their bones might break the skin and penetrate the plank lashed around the leg and the healing bone might try to grow into the plank, forcing the foreman to re-crush the wounded leg, or sever it entirely. And then the boy has no hope left at all, and they remove his chains because he cannot run at all.

And the other boys in this group, who are good and obedient will be chained just the same, locked into prison cells in the mines at night just the same. Nightmares will catch them always and anxiety may overtake everything as nightly sounds of falling timbers and crashing walls arrive to them in their cells deep within the mine shafts.

And the fires that light the caverns and the rich deposits will become too bright as their hope fades. And eventually they will die and fade just as the last group of boys brought in did. And a new group will be sold to replace them. Because here they are only tools of labor.

The girls, the pretty ones and the gentle ones, go separate ways.

Some are sold to rich men who pay deeply for their perversions. And the girls pay even more deeply in their hearts. They may be beaten, they may be raped, they may be forced into unspeakable ways. But many of them will have opportunity and many of them will take it - and their life - into their own hands.

And some are sold off like cattle from the herd. They may find themselves locked in a closet, kept well fed and neglected of sunlight for many weeks. Without company, or certainty, only fear as a constant they live. Well nourished, neglected, the girl grows fat and pale. And then her buyer sees her again as he brings her food to her, and he grows hungry himself. Because here they are the objects of lustful sins.

The others arrive in a group to a hidden laboratory.

They'll tell you, the children who are still left when the new group arrives, that the worst part is hearing the others screaming - one by one as they're taken away.

And the new children will ask: "Screaming?"

And the others will nod their heads with far-too-wide eyes and deep circles and creases on their faces like they've not slept in years and they'll whisper: "Like pain. Like pain is all they have."

And they'll agree then and there that they'd rather die than be taken away one-by-one like the others before them. But like the others before them, they're still kids, and they're still shortsighted, and even though they'll hear one more of them each night screaming in terror and in agony, they'll still think they can escape. But they can't. Because here is the worst thing: here is the Experimental Station.

One-by-one the experiments will happen. Things you wouldn't dream of even in the worst nightmare ever after the worst day ever because normal people couldn't think to do them - only monsters could.

The monsters will burn them alive sometimes: sometimes slowly, sometimes separate from their d?ons, sometimes together, sometimes just their d?on. And if their d?on tries to take flight and get away they might light his wings on fire first.

The monsters will poison them, and bury them, and drown them, and tear them from their d?ons, and tear them limb-from-limb, and cover them in thick oil-silk material. And they'll meticulously plot out how the children die. Each death will become its own separate chart, its own little file, and it's own point on the greater scatter graph. The bodies are incinerated.

But the most haunting thing of all is outside the Experimental Station: a tall rectangular building like a police box or an upturned coffin made in a pale blue with a push-bar door locked for restricted access. And inside they hang crisp white charts on white tack boards. It's where they store their measurements. And the monsters write on them in perfectly bland script, things like:

Subject 43 died of asphyxiation four minutes twenty six seconds after administration of Strain VX2-2 directly into femoral artery of her person.

Note Subject 42 for comparison of injection site.  
Note Subject 41 for comparison of injection site.  
Note Subject 40 for comparison of injection site.  
Note Subject 39 for comparison of child weight.  
Note Subject 38 for comparison of child weight.  
Note Subject 37 for comparison of gender.

And Subject 43 would then become a note on the bottom of Subject 44 to note for comparison of human v. d?on injection. And the storage unit would fill up very quickly.

Because the Gobblers exist.

--

"Now we'll just end it as what it is - rumour. We needn't say it's fact, just that it's fact these are the types of things parents are telling their children to keep them to behave. It's a study of the human mind, really."

The group nodded. Ill-content or happy with their reporting skills and their nearly-finished paper, it was later than they'd like and they'd already been forced to raid the late-night campus cafe in search of coffee and meat pasties to keep them going for the night.

"You really think the Professor will buy this?" The nay-sayer was at it again, but far too late into the night to start with his tiring teammates.

The leader yawned loudly before responding. "Fact or Fiction it doesn't really matter, you just have to say it the right way and no one will know the difference unless it bites them in the shit-end of next week." 


	13. Fifth Measure: Da Capo Al Fine

"Feddin, something is very wrong here." She paused only long enough for him to realize she hadn't finished. "We have tried very hard to accommodate you as painlessly as possible, we converted the second room and moved the grade-school books out before your return. Your father, all of us had hoped this would be a fresh start for you." The threat again. "You can't continue to dwell on past accidents for so long."

_Accidents!_

"I really should call your Father, he might know how to deal with this better. It's not healthy." She didn't even know it was a threat.

Feddin pretended not to hear. Again, tax rates, political treaties, maps, equations on payment exchange rates and plans of interest high enough and long enough to drive local merchants from their own markets. A tracking chart on high seasons for plum shipments from somewhere to the East.

"It's the little girl you're writing about."

Just like that.

_Why_, his head rang.

* * *

Author notes:  
I don't mean to add these things but thought I'd say quickly that I was on vacation and then I got sick. Actually I'm still sick, pathetic cough Need to be healthy, go to NY, catch a show. But anyhow I won't leave such large gaps between updates anymore. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that so no pennies for me. Cheers to readers and reviewers - much appreciated!

Also, sweetbreads are sheep brains.

And I'm changing the rating on this now, I am sorry. I didn't intend for this chapter to be horrifying but I think it kind of is. I mean, kids have the best horror stories - and curse words, learned all my curse words from people my age when we were young - and I expect the preceding bits came from kids. Also I was reading Neil Gaiman and he left some pretty gruesome images in my head. But I still love him.

I have another dark chapter coming up but I promise something better either before or after.


	14. The Birds and The Fishes

As a fore note the author wishes to mention that the author, publisher, editor, and all associate Scholars, Professors, and researchers do not endorse the beliefs or practices of the witches.

This book and the chapters within seek to portray only a factual retelling of the team's encounter with the witches: including rituals practiced, folklore told, and important psychological and scientific-theological perceptions found by the team. This book does not intend to promote or teach the practices of the witches and should not be distributed outside of scholarly bounds.

If you've encountered a copy of this book outside of a College, University, or Officially Authorised setting it is an illegal copy and as such you are committing a crime in handling or reading its contents. Illegal copies turned in to the appropriate authorities with information on distribution vendor will incur no criminal fees or actions.

_Karel Powers_

**Chapter 14**

A tale from the witches of the clan region of Lake Umbozero(143). The tale is spoken aloud during a series of five sittings. It is especially curious to note that while the tale is oral only and has not been recorded for retelling(144) that it is very long and detailed for an act of oral communication. It seems this may be due to the long lives the witches lead. Researchers on the Kelpsalm Treaties Expedition(145) made similar notes regarding the length of witch lore, but this remains the first empirical recording of one such piece.

* * *

Witches, they say, are not truly aware of the fullness of adventure in life until they have a daughter. Sons are beloved as either sex would be, but with their short lives flaring and failing so rapidly, a witch may as well rend her heart from her breast before wish for a son. So when the witches pray before a childbirth, many of the sisters may gather around and set chants and spells up to the great goddess in their sister's wishes for a girl.

But the worst fate for a witch in becoming a mother, more hurtful even than loving a child she knows must die before her, is a birth of twins with opposite sexes. The witch mother will love both equally, yet she will be there and she will be the one to comfort the girl when her brother dies. To have twins of the opposite sex is to be pitied greatly within one's clan, and the children of such stigma must inevitably find themselves living out a cursed fate as one grows old and withered and the other stays robust and beautiful, the martyr of the pair.

The witch-girl was born into one of the South-East clans in her region. Her brother followed nearly an hour later. Only in the first few days of his life did they consider the babe younger than his sister.

The clan Queen ran her knife through the entrails of a reindeer she slew for its meat and found deep tragedy wrapping itself into the lives of the twins. But she said nothing of what she'd read, for the babes would grow together for a time and only tragedy could be expected if they were to become close, as their mother wished. For although the son would be exiled from the clan before his seventh birth year, the mother witch remained true and would remain true to his father.

Even after the son left to live with his father, the mother remained a constant visitor. In the quiet darkness of deep winter night her dæmon would search the skies above the village where they lived and they stole quiet evenings and hours to see both man and boy.

And as was common among the true lovers - those witches and men who would spend their lives together, give up their own natures to embrace the other for whatever eternity could be granted to them if their natures weren't already defining the impossibilities of such an action - the witch-child would be allowed to live with her father, and therefore her brother, for as long as she desired while they still lived. And the scenario was to her liking. Her father and brother were short-lived, and staying with them enabled her mother to visit the man and the son she'd born him as often as she wished.

So the girl prepared herself when she turned sixteen - still very much a child in the eyes of the women around her - and she would go live with her father. She sent her dæmon ahead with the message.

She had seen nothing of the male side of her family since parting ways when the children had turned six together and she'd traveled with her brother by coach for his send-off. She remembered being very sad at saying goodbye, and was happy to be able to be with him again, and excited to meet the father she had only seen briefly.

He was a clock-maker, but one of no note as of yet. He'd inherited a love of mechanics from his grandfather, but whereas the older man had enjoyed tinkering with single engines and photon-spinner devices as only a hobby, the younger man had created the love in his heart as a full-time occupation. But he'd turned to clocks and clockwork: wind-actions and wind-ups rather than those he might call "wind-downs" and "wear-downs."

He'd purchased a small empty half-store half-house in a village many kilometers south of his love affair, and had set about renovating the space. He painted every inch of wood and wrought iron post in bright colors and planted a towering garden of weedy-looking vegetable rows in the back. He purchased bulk buyouts of small cogs and wheels and wires and magnets to work with and stored them all in a neatly laid-out designated storage area. For while he was a clock-maker of no note, he was only a clock-maker of no note _yet_; he was young and ambitious and a brilliant father to his young son and every village had great need of such a man.

So when he was asked to leave his house for a week to assist the local magistrate in designing space and preparing for an upcoming festival, he readily agreed and arranged to lock up his shop and house for the time.

This was when his witch-daughter arrived, and the man had to sit quietly in his room that night to keep from sobbing in happiness and in sadness at what fate had brought to him. But still the father would leave for the week - such a long time to leave a daughter he did not know, yet she might hardly notice he'd be gone.

Her brother worked part-time in the village, but lived in the house and would see to it that things like meals and clothing shopping and appropriate sleeping times were seen to. Though his dæmon had settled a few years previously, until this time of meeting his child-like witch-sister, never before had he to act as an adult for someone else. Later, he might know this was all very grand thinking for a short-lived man.

Her brother left for work early in the morning, but much later than she'd woken. She had already had plenty of time to explore the house and by the hour he'd risen she'd gathered together great curiosity and an ammunition of questions for the human things she had found. His morning routine was pushed aside, and breakfast was made of scrambled and half-burned eggs while his witch-sister hoarded his time with her questions, met half-sensibly by his groggy morning disposition.

And then he left her with the keys, teaching her how to lock and unlock the doors if she went out, asking her to stay in the house for the day at least, and generally hoping that the strange witch-child who asked about even the simplest things - furnaces and screwdrivers and water taps for example - wouldn't harm herself while he left. Their worlds were far different things.

And with his leaving, she had inherited the many keys in her father's shop. And to her delight, though the shop felt very small compared to her homeland riding her cloudpine over mountain ranges and sprinting the forests with her friends, she was able to step through door after door using the keys, leaving them all open and opening her space up in the process. She began to think of her father as a very excellent example of a human, where he compartmentalised his home just as he did with the pieces of metal he used in his business. Short-lived persons tended to have a poorer memory than her kind, and she was happy knowing that she would remember this aspect of her father, and perhaps try to use it her own way, even when he was gone.

The keys she had been given were the type which had the knack of being inherited: those which were transfered from one pair of hands into another with the property deed as neither set could ever discover the lock which it would open, and so it remained where it was found, to be rediscovered as a puzzle where despite each new try it's counterpart keyhole remained hidden. The key ring had lived in her father's shop when he had bought and renovated it and would likely remain part of the building even after she would leave for the North again.

Still, as all keys do with their allure and their possibility, she was tempted, and needed to try each one in each lock as she came to it. She slipped the newer-looking keys from the ring and stuck each in its pairing keyhole as she came to the newer doors for the shop: her father's storage room, her brother's small bedroom, her father's small bedroom, her father's second closet (for the first had no door at all), and her father's main shop door. She had no designated room but it suited her still. She counted off and left the five keys where they should go.

A sixth key quickly caught her eye for its smallness. Keys like this, she was certain, should lead to very interesting human places. Just as the smaller bones in animal carcasses often carried the greatest importance in reading Signs, human things were like to work in the same manner. But to her dismay, it led only to the inside of a large iron box filled with human coins and papers in the basement.

Another key - which more resembled one of her father's clockwork turning tools than a true key - she found to open a small heavy door in the basement which was filled with soot. It seemed a depressing discovery until she realised that it led to the furnace above and the chimney beyond. She quickly assessed the size and possibility of the thing. And then the witch-child and her dæmon spent nearly an hour together chasing each other up and down the chute and onto the rooftop with her using the inner rungs and brickwork of the chimney stack, coughing in the dust and whooping for the echoes and generally becoming very sooty and filthy and happy in the way that only children can without thinking of either danger or dirt.

Her brother returned at noontime to find her like this: blackened and enjoying herself with unfettered satisfaction. He laughed at his sister and saw quickly that he was to be the responsible one of the pair even if they were nearly the same age.

He took her arm with care not to elaborate on the mess she'd already tracked around the kitchen. Her dæmon, however, chirruped as a gaudy-whiskered monkey and followed after, carefully laying small black hand prints on the bare and the less-tracked tiles leading from the kitchen out the back door. Her brother led her to the backyard where he introduced her in one well-timed gentle shove to a large basin of water which had been used as a water source for the birds.

Her dæmon, still unsettled, took on the form of a frigate bird and shrieked and flapped at her brother's salamander, and they shouted horrible insults and cross-cultural curses back and forth in the garden. She threw the contents of one of the potted plants at him and he ducked and dared her to go back where she belonged. But it was all only a show of her displeasure at being forced to rid herself of her well-earned dirt. She was not truly angry at her brother. And though he went somewhat grudgingly inside to gather soapy rags and a bucket, he was similarly not truly angry with her.

It was their first real time together as siblings. Though it was not to be the last of her foolish acts as a young witch among humans, it was when she learned first to rely on her brother to teach her the right way of humans. As the witches had taught her her nature as a witch, here she would discover some other nature the world had to offer.

They fought often after that, as human-children half their age might. And their father would scold them and send the boy to his room, the girl to the kitchen to sit in a corner. And he'd retreat to his back room of the shop and pull his glasses from a drawer and sit to work with a sigh.

Sometimes their mother would come for a visit, though not often enough for the son. And long before he'd become accustomed to never truly having a mother, and long before he could fathom the sister who seemed to forget to age as he did, he found other women in his life. He might be married before his witch-sibling's dæmon would settle, he'd joke with her, but his words would hurt. It reminded the witch-child how short his life really was, and how short her time with this family could be. And she loved her father and her brother and took pride as the clock-maker of-no-note-yet became a trustworthy man in the community, reliable and thorough and honest in his tinkering business - now expanded - and always a figure of prominence in the organisation of the autumn festival.

Secretly, the witch-child deeply loved the week her father left for the festival. Since the very first festival planning had allowed her to peruse the key-ring while her brother was away with work, she enjoyed trying her luck again to mark each passing year. This year her brother would be gone the entire week as well, working to add a roof onto the new house he'd labor on for a discount with the builders: his own house.

He had grown very quickly. He would soon ask a woman to marry him. The witch-girl had met the human-woman many times now, she was the one, her brother had said: love. And soon he would leave the house and their short time together. All much sooner than she'd realised.

And so she marked the passing years with the key ring. Before many of the annual attempts had passed the witch-child had discovered where most of the keys belonged. One she found was the mate to a set of buried doors in the garden that led straight down to a well. She had gotten into some trouble over that, but it was easy enough for the witch-child and her dæmon to climb back out.

Some of the key ring discoveries she marked by her family. The key with the flat head and short teeth had been placed properly the year her father had closed his shop for the first time to have a "holiday" with his children. To her delight, the holiday included a great deal of being out-of-doors in the "wild" where they would "reconnect with nature."

She knew the key with the round end and single split-tooth bodice - which actually belonged to the neighbor's lock box - went with the year her brother broke his wrist and elbow in a sporting match. She'd left for a week to find the right ngredients, but her knowledge of the witch-spells was shoddy and the spelled drink did nothing but give her brother a great plethora of appalling faces while he drank the concoction. And two or three of the bland keys she'd stuck together on the ring went hand-in-hand with the year her father had decided she needed to learn maths and tried to put her in a human school.

But there were three keys left on the ring, and as this year would mark her brother's leaving, it seemed to the witch-child her last opportunity to finish unlocking the family's house.

And this year she felt prepared as she'd returned to her mother during the winter months to participate in some of the rituals. In her time with her clan again she'd learned a spell of location, and had relished in discovering and hearing more from her sisters. She'd pointed out the names of all the region's plants and animals from memory and been free to ride her cloudpine branch again as she hadn't for years. She sang underneath the chill of the stars and wore her familiar garments again. She told stories of her human family and was heartened to discover how easily rekindled old friendships were. But in her happiness, for a time she was deeply distraught to learn how much the human world had been unable to satisfy this part of her.

But her sadness could not last and there was much to rejoice in the day her dæmon settled. He was smallish, and mostly white, with black feathers on his head and a yellow underbelly: a Lapland bunting. She knew Skraelings might call him a Longspur. And she became excited again to go back to the human world. Her brother had been wrong, and she was still enough of a child to wish to show off her dæmon's newly settled form before her human-twin married.

The year her dæmon settled had also marked the year her brother would move from the family's house: this year. Time with the humans seemed much faster, like the avalanches on the mountains: some strange rarity that happened so quickly and might alter everything in its path. But even living with them, she was witch, not human. She did not despair either but would use her new witch-knowledge in the human world.

She laid three bowls of muddy water on her father's workbench and dropped one of the three puzzle keys into each. She stirred them a moment as part of the process. Her dæmon took a place on her shoulder and she recited the spells. Two of the bowls began glowing pale blue and lovely, both the same color. She plucked the two keys out and began the hunt for the pale blue which would mark their matches.

The house was small so her search was short. The face of a dusty grandfather clock in the attic emitted the telling pale blue glow, and she was shortly pulling the thing from its encasement of spider webs and bric-a-brac. The back of it came away as she pushed a screwdriver into the seam of the swollen wood. Inside, the pale blue was even more alluring. She moved her fingers deftly into the familiar inner workings as she'd seen her father do: up, in, press along, find the catch. An inner compartment sprang open with her touch.

Fingers moved again: navigated past the large spring, underneath the second brass-coloured cog, she felt the keyhole almost instantly and had the hidden latch unlocked with the same speed. A small wooden tube fell out with a large padlock attached. She wondered how it had been stored secretly inside the clock so long. The second-to-last key went smoothly into the padlock with a click and opened it. But she puzzled, and shut the lock again. She opened the tube at one end. The lock was irrelevant to its safe-keeping.

Inside she found the most amazing of her discoveries yet: a series of letters, all from the same man, all unaddressed and all ultimately unsent. Letters from her father to her mother: love letters. The inner workings of the man's heart for the witch-woman he loved. The young witch brushed away tears and replaced the tube in the clockwork to leave it as it was. She was not too young to discover love, but this was not hers. It would remain for now to her a secret thing.

She went back to her third water bowl without anticipation. The last key would need great adventure to surpass what she'd just found. But the key did not glow. She had obtained the water from a river some great distance from her family's house, and would need to travel there again for a new spell. But she was alone in the house and the week was slotted out each year for her adventure, so the young witch and her dæmon left without hesitation.

It took hours of walking by foot while flight would have made the journey in much less time, but she had the key in her pocket and possibility to occupy her. The river was running slowly and she found a secluded spot along it where the trees hugged in close and grew into the water and the embankments were held up by great wooden beams pounded into their sides.

She slipped from her skirt and blouse and waded into the river to her waist. She had kept the key from her pocket and placed it along the bottom of the river, weighted down by a small pile of rocks she laid on top. She began the spell again, this time with the river currents as the stirring agent she needed.

Rivers were natural things, but known as an enemy of witches in some of the more terrifying northern regions. Water trapped air, air escaped water, water fell from the air. Ancient lore portrayed each moment in a great battle between the Goddess Yambe-Akka and the Dark Goddess who ruled water and river, called Baba Huaga in her clan. Witches were proud of their nature and the nature around them, but water still held some fear. Some of the cultures her people spoke with would talk of witches as fire women - born of the marsh fire that escaped pockets of witch oil deep in the water. Some instinct within the young witch would never release the fear of the ancient tales.  
Witches were born to the air, and while the air and the wind traced over the world and went all places, the waters - and even more the rivers - laid their fingers deeply over the land, cupping its secrets in a wet embrace. For the physicality of the water, these rivers were better devices for location spells to the young witch.

The spell complete, she kicked the stone pile aside to see if the key had taken on colour.

A sound from the embankment stole her attention away before she could see anything under the clearing water. Someone was shouting at her.

A young man stood barefoot at the river's edge with his toes only just in the water. He shouted and hopped from foot to foot to get the witch-girl's attention. She paid him no heed and stooped to pick up the key - now glowing a deep violet colour. Her action seemed to send the young man into further hysterics and he began sloshing into the water behind her.

Her time in human years had been plenty, but the witch-girl was still very young, and did not know how to properly deal with such a person as the young man wading into the river, calling such vague things as "Girl!" and "Please, don't!" at her.

But then he seemed to know better. Perhaps it was the glowing key she now held, but he called to her: her true nature of witch, so that she was persuaded to turn and attend him. And perhaps it was the key which now could become un-puzzled or perhaps it was the near-interruption of the single spell she had successfully learned, but as she gazed at the young man - perhaps a few years older than herself - she felt a sudden heat inside herself. The heat rushed out in anger. She shouted at the man to stop, and to leave her to her business.

He paused in his wading, but did not move at her words.

"How are you certain I am a witch?" She called.

"Because I know of no women who would stand in the midst of a river in only her undergarments!" He shouted back. "Or are you unsound?"

The young witch was puzzled, and watched him without moving.

"Are you a witch, then?" He asked, now into the river just below his waistline. "Should I bring your clothing to you?"

The young witch saw this as a challenge of her pride, and was unashamed of her body as humans were. She shook her head no, but agreed that she was a witch.

The young man laughed, and went back to sit in the mud at the river's edge.

"Please leave," the witch said, but the young man would not. She tried cursing at him, and then moved to threaten him with the names of all the poisonous mushrooms and plant roots she knew, but he laughed again at this, and otherwise seemed to pay her no mind. The young witch was annoyed at him, and further annoyed to realise that she enjoyed his laugh despite her threats. Her brother laughed similarly at her witch-threats, but was not as handsome as this young man.

"Why do you not leave?" she asked.

"I cannot leave," the young man said, and he spread his arms as if to hug the river around him. "This is where I belong. Why do you not leave? Witches fly, do they not?"

The young witch laughed now, for there was no cloudpine in this region and she'd left her branch far north. With the key in her hand, she went back to the river's bank where the young man sat near her pile of clothing.

It was then with a shudder that she realised why the man had said he could not leave. His dæmon, a small translucent-looking fish swam around his feet while he sat in the mud-like water.

Somewhere, nearly a kilometer away in the trees along the river's edge, her own dæmon let out a frightened cry, and flapped his wings rapidly in the shock, until her heart would stop beating so quickly.

Feeling great pity for the young man, the young witch sat next to him in the water.

"Your dæmon settled as a fish." She said.

"We are content," the young man spoke sincerely. He had often encountered such heartfelt reactions. "Where is your dæmon? Do witches not have dæmons?"

"Witches have dæmons, too. We can separate from each other by a great distance. But our dæmons always settle as birds."

"How far?" He asked.

"Farther than I can travel by cloudpine in flight to reach either end of my clan's territory. A greater distance than we have yet to separate by." She looked at the young man to find hurt in his gaze - an emotion she recognized with surprising speed. "But we gain the power through a great trial, there is much pain, but to be connected over such a distance is our gift."

The young man seemed satisfied by the admission.

"How far are you able to move?" She asked.

He pointed to the banks up and down both sides of the river.

"There is a bridge a few kilometers north of here, and they've built it to the very edge and into the river. I can't cross over it so we both have to swim to go past there. The water gets deep sometimes, but these warm days before autumn keep the river shallow in most places."

"Is there no way -" He cut off her question with waving hands. Many people before her had asked the same thing.

"Your dæmon is a bird so it is natural to fly in the skies with him?"

She nodded to this.

"Would having him in a cage satisfy you?"

The young witch had to agree with him them. The thought of her dæmon living life in a cage was appalling to her.

She left the river bank at sunset that day, the spelled key stayed in her pocket and the adventure there seemed all the more special after meeting the young man.

But she did not seek her adventure immediately. The key stayed in her pocket and the week went long until her father and brother returned. She ached to speak with her human brother as she never had before. When he returned she spoke with him alone in the kitchen. She asked him about humans and their dæmons and told him about the young man by the river but did not say why she'd been there. She asked what adventure he thought a person living like the young man might have, because she was young and much of her life was still spent greedy for adventure and the satisfaction therein. And her brother asked if she would return to find the young man by the river again, and she realised as he asked her that she would.

More than anything she realised that to find the young man again was exactly what she wanted. And knowing that scared her in a way that was new.

She woke the following morning and with her dæmon, walked from the family house back to the river. She found the young man in the middle of the river, half-naked as she had been their previous meeting. He ducked under the water and back up repeatedly laughing seemingly to himself but in all likelihood with his dæmon.

Seeing the young witch on the river bank, he called to her. "You have bespelled the river, witch-girl! Come and see!"

She slipped from her clothes without hesitation and joined the man in the middle of the river where he pointed at a dark violet glow in the mud at his feet. His dæmon swam with enthusiasm around the place.

"It seems to have no purpose." He said, and picked up the mud to show that the glowing would remain at the river's bottom instead of in the mud. It was then that the young man noticed the glowing key that the witch girl had put on a string around her neck.

"It must be the lock to the key," she said and took the key from against her breast and placed it into the young man's muddy hand.

"Am I able to unlock the river?" The young man asked, but the witch did not know.

"You are of the water, I am of the air. More than myself you should be able to."

Taking the key, he ducked under the water again, and laid it in place at the river's bottom.

The first sign of change was the noise, and it came quickly. The bird calls the young man had grown accustomed to changed from morning chirrups to exotic mating calls. The light of the day changed and the water current picked up and grew warmer. He laughed and grabbed the witch-girl's hands so they did not separate while the river around them continued changing. Bright flowers began growing from the overhanging trees and vines appeared thick and green along the embankment's wooden beams.

The young man's little fish dæmon darted with effort to leap from the water again and again, for while the water they stood in changed and sweetened and cleared, the view above the surface was far lovelier. Pieces of grass floated past the pair as they held hands. Twigs and larger branches followed presently as evidence of a storm's passing. The current was swift but pleasant and the witch-girl was excited to see that the young man was enjoying the happenings with the same sense of adventure she felt.

"Where are we?" The young man asked when the river seemed stable again. But the witch girl did not know. He held onto her hands tightly. "But this is your spell?" He questioned further.

"I am young." The girl admitted, "The spell may have gone wrong."

The young man laughed and let go of her to float steadily in the current. She waded behind his movement down the river, kicking through the deeper parts. The two went on like this for some time quietly until the young man spoke again.

"This is the nicest river I have ever been on." He said and splashed to stand in the river's current. And then the strangest thing yet happened. The witch-girl had not been close to the young man, but she was suddenly. The young man caught her again, but not by the hands. And without knowing how or why, the witch girl found herself locked fiercely against his body, her lips pressing back against his.

Her bird dæmon fretted and called loudly and flew circles around over the pair in the strange river. His small fish skittered and pushed whorls of mud up as she trailed along the river's bottom confusedly. But neither could be consoled and the pair in the river separated from their embrace.

The young man apologised to her, but she was flushed and surprised and too young to feel any less fiercely, so the act was repeated again and again until her dæmon shrieked suddenly and dropped in the thick trees at the river's edge. The young witch had missed his warnings and something had grown foul while she had lost herself to pleasure.

She pulled from the young man. The light had gone dim and she hushed his questioning at her sudden wariness. The warmth of the river and the body she'd felt left to be replaced by fear, for she was not born of the river as the young man was and she remembered with a chill: she was trespassing on the territory of the Dark Goddess.

And with a suddenness that made her heart ache, the young man was no longer in front of her. Her dæmon made quiet noises from deep within the trees. They were alone. They were where they were not allowed, and the young man - the true creature of the water - was no longer there to protect them from what might come. The noises of the river quieted.

It was their most dire moment together. She held her breath and with speed moved to the posts of the river's embankment. The current picked up swiftly and the river became deep. She felt her legs beginning to stream behind her body with the force. She kicked and stirred up more eddies against the embankment's wooden walls, and held on tighter.

And the woman appeared, just as she'd known, just as the stories told.

Mists began gathering together current-North from where she held the post. Her teeth chattered, not from cold, and she knew only one thing with certainty: she must remain unnoticed.

The water belonged to Baba Huaga, the Dark Goddess, and the young witch had tried to claim its property. It was not a place for a witch-child. Witches belonged to the skies with their bird-formed dæmons and their cloudpine and the singing of the wind and nightly choruses of the stars. And Baba Huaga owned any soul who dared to steal from her. Without exception their life was hers to take or allow as she pleased. But the river was preparing for the Dark Goddess, and the young witch's life would be hers. Her dæmon would be a feast for Baba Huaga to eat, and she would be left with nothing but pain.

She came upon a small river raft, built roughly from old painted planks in various shades and status of peeling and piled high with twigs and bark to keep her feet from the river swells which ruptured over the top. She wore a long dark robe, not elegantly for the woman was stout and elderly and her figure slunk underneath the long folds like a creature half-swallowed in some sucking muddy tide. Her eyes were wide like an animal's and shone yellow in the oncoming twilight. She showed a set of crocodile-like teeth when she saw the young witch bobbing not far from her wooden craft. And though the witch-child had been told many times to stay unmoving, to stay unnoticed, that the dark goddess might try to trick her and that she was safe if she held the embankment, she was hurt and abandoned and the knowledge to stay still left her with the monstrous grin.

The witch-child ducked down. Hunted at once she went under the murky water, swelling further now and quickening around her thinly-clad figure, darkening so much that it seemed more dirt in appearance, if not in actual substance. She pushed from the embankment's safety and swirls of rushing water sounded pressing against her ears. Muffled sloshing sounds of water breaking at the wooden embankments kept her orientation and she wished deeply that her companion had been left to her. She held her breath and pushed with both arms through the water, kicked like a frog to keep from sending more splashing upward if her directional sense were to be trusted. She kicked and pushed in rhythm. Her lungs started to feel weak and she fought to keep from forcing her remaining breath out in bubbles. She could escape the Eater if she could find her direction. She was a witch. But the currents were unnatural.

Still, she found the bottom of the small river and she pushed from it without hesitation, aiming vertically for the surface. She broke for air a moment, looked around. Her hair stuck plastered over her eyes as she sloshed with one arm to push it from her face. An oar, half formed from river driftwood and tied round with the debris of fishermen came swinging at her face. She ducked again and felt the very bottom of the oar's paddle - the top half of a salt crate with its hinges still attached and covered in river gunk - slide across the top of her scalp.

But Baba Huaga's swing wasn't deadened by the water because the dark goddess ruled it, and so the young witch felt the blow fully scrape across her scalp, and wondered at injury there. She was certain she must be bleeding.

She went under again, intending to swim farther. Her dæmon stayed hidden in the trees along the river bank in fear. He was unable to help her for he was the ultimate target of Baba Huaga. The young witch prayed to the great goddess as she swam. But she broke the surface again to find the Dark Goddess hovering just over her. Again, she retreated underwater, but her head wound bled freely and distracted her so that she could not find her direction.

Her lungs burned and a hiccup of water escaped past her guarded lips. The urge to cough was unbearable and she gave in to it just as she found her way upward again. She rose near the edge in a fit of coughing, closed her eyes against the inevitable vision which would meet her there. A hand wrapped around her waist and caught her to the embankment. Something cold pressed into her breast, warmth hesitated over her lips, and she opened her eyes as the world slid around her.

With the same suddenness as it had begun, it was over. The young witch was back in the river near her family's house. She coughed up river water and continued coughing until it turned into sobbing. Her dæmon flew to the safety of her arms and they were together again in the middle of the calm river. They had returned and they were safe, but they were alone. She held the key with as much force as she held her own dæmon. The young man had returned to saved them but had given them the key to return with.

He remained still in the river of the Dark Goddess.

The young witch left the river as twilight came. The key she wore on a string around her neck no longer glowed. Her spells failed with her attempts. She did not cry when she returned to her family's house. She bid her brother farewell as he moved from the family house to live with his new wife. She hugged her father goodbye as she, too, left.

And the young witch traveled back to her homeland where she was welcomed again. She would visit the men of her family, and she would learn the spells of her sisters. She would come to fight in wars against enemy clans, against the panserbjorne of Svalbard, and against the Tartars as they sought to destroy them all. She would come to fly great distances against the thinning aurora and even beyond its veil in a time of great catastrophe. And she would come to fly farther still, until she did find the moment when it hurt to be separated from her dæmon.

But still she knew deeply that the last key would remain her greatest adventure. For he was a man of the river, and he would live against the Dark Goddess. And she would find him, and there the key would at last be paired. For she would come one day to have a child of her own. And she would have the greatest adventure yet.

She would find him again.

* * *

No member of the team, male or female, was permitted to attend the event which proceeded the end of this story.

Researchers later noted that the young witch girls who attended to the telling and seemingly who were the purpose behind the gatherings were gone without exception from the clan at large for a minimum of fifteen days. While it is common for the older witches to leave the general region of their clan and not return for weeks on end, the young girls below the age of fourteen or fifteen - prior to this occurrence - did not depart from their common meeting region for more than two days before returning again.

From this, the team believes the event was likely a form of a "coming of age" ritual among the witches.

* * *

(143)The witch clans define their regions outside the boundaries of our world's political maps. The regions are known to alter based on the seasons, wars between clans, and on migration of certain species. The clan in mention is ruled by witch-queen Tanja Leutara, one of the more peacable clan queens encountered. The region is roughly described as part of the Murmansk Oblast, including the Kola Peninsula, and the region directly opposite the straight. It is roughly 100,000 square kilometers in area.

(144)Interview with witch Ieana Vikarohv, age 129. Photograms accompany audio recording. Interview length: fifty-six minutes.

(145)The Kelpsalm Treaties Expedition set about in search of new fuel and other resources in the Lapland region. A team of five credible scientific theologians accompanied the exploration for the duration of the journey to assist in any findings. Their goal was to renew the resource of nickel and sulphur and create a base of reasearch in the Kola Borehole.

Expedition leaders mistakenly first approached the witch clan of queen Tanja Leutara as that particular clan had been last known to hold the region of the borehole. However, since the last recordings the borehole had changed ownership in the witch clans to the typically West-Northwest Lapland based clan under the new young witch queen Serafina Pekkala.

The Expedition ultimately failed to discover new wealth in the borehole, despite overall cooperation from witches. Data from cultural interactions and navigational tracking was recorded by the scientific theologians as a secondary option for profits, and ultimately these findings were the only usable result of the Expedition. The documentation of the Expedition has been used in numerous credible instances including the highly reputable map making of the Strange Company, Ltd.

* * *

A thank-you to all readers and especially comment-ors: it's very encouraging even when the story seems to be going nowhere or I can't figure out what comes next to hear from you folks. I really appreciate it, it's easy to get distracted without being kept in line!


	15. A Zombi Story

"My dear child." The man reached over whispering the young babe's name and giving her his ring finger to hold onto. The child cooed within her bundled blankets, screeching with delight when her father's growth of whiskers rose into blurred view at the end of her nose. "The dearest of potential in these small hands." The baby gurgled again as her father tickled at the edges of her feet.

"Shall I tell you a story, then? Something a father ought to do for his little girl?" He wondered aloud, not expecting more than a few whimsical noises from his daughter: those which she hastily supplied in abundance.

"A story, then."

He rapped against the glass separating him from the driver and pushed aside one of the sliding panes to speak through.

"Take us around back when we arrive."

"Sir?"

"No one is following us now, and I'd like to keep that advantage for a few days at least."

"Understood, Sir."

The father slid the pane back into place and went back to attending the child.

"All the best researchers and scholars in Berlin at the academy, even in London, the talk in Geneva you'll find the same opinions. The world is a smaller place than I'd wish for you, my little girl. A smaller place for all of us, and shrinking ever more. Shrinking with intent as some minds," he sighed deeply, "some brilliant minds grow narrower and crueler."

She hiccuped and tried her best to look petulant as he took her from her nurse onto his own lap.

"I'll tell you about the world." He whispered. "I'll tell you about the world you'll never live in. Not anymore."

And then he began.

Words swam confidently and smoothly between well-attended lips, delighting the child as they spun coldly into the kind of tale you may only tell the very youngest, knowing those merely young would find terrors striking out at them in fits of sleepless nights, while guardians - the fiendly tale-teller villains themselves - sit helpless, swatting away the haunts laid so thoroughly through their own speech.

Sometimes a person, looking to enact a deed so vile must go somewhere far away. It's human nature to want to keep the evil from any place which can be called 'home,' and human nature to wonder. Where wonder meets cruelty is the place where darkness reigns, where the nature of curiosity oversteps its own constraints to meet possibility, and there lies the breeding ground of dark deeds: the darkness.

Africa: a continent thus darkened. The blood of its people richly purchasing fair soil by those seeking to exploit them, traders working in human goods, scholars meddling with lives for their studies, fractures rising at ridiculous rates over power. And power punishing to control with no one to control power's reach. It could've been the freest nation in the world were it not for the expansion of the Church branches.

But they came. And you can't discover somewhere new without trying to discover its advantages as well. And they discovered much: free labor, rich mines, entire populations to dominate, to convert, to ruin. And worst of all, they discovered the dark secrets Africa held all her own.

A man is born free but chained shortly thereafter. Unless his will is strong enough to helm his own destiny, to force himself as a feather against the wind and strip his chains away. And when unchained what choice has he but to break the chains of others, to gather those to himself and turn that army against the controlling wind, to freeze its strength and with his own might force out the last breath. That is the truth of being a man, of being human. But in the Africs they have discovered something: a terrible way to not only strangle man in chain, but to blind him to chain, wind, and will so that he may suffocate under others without knowing air himself.

This creature is made from man, but removed of man. A _zombi_.

If you see a _zombi_, you will know instantly. He does not speak, because he has nothing to say. He does not meet your gaze because he does not acknowledge existing. His arms hang useless - as a jacket from a hanger - because his body only obeys the will of another. He will stare unrecognizing if his family lies in tears before him, because he has no feeling. And his eyes are hollow because they see no future, and hold no dreams.

He will walk through fire without feeling pain if told. He will fight until his death and not understand he is dying. He will obey utterly the commands of his master and only those. And you will recognize him because he has no dæmon. He has no dæmon, and yet he walks, he moves, he obeys.

There is a ritual to creating the _zombi_ of a man. And it's performed only with the greatest fear by the Afric peoples. And only with the greatest of discretion does the ritual ever occur.

When a man has committed crimes so great against his people, he is given choice by the elders: he will live out life as a _zombi_, used by the people of his tribe for work, or he will be stripped down to have burning spikes hammered through his bowels as he lies on a rock: a call for death, painful and horrifying so to sear the image into others and cause the man great pain as he dies. The choice is not simple for the man, but many - knowing the single ray in life left to them may be to discourage ill deeds in others - will chose this death quickly.

For the man who chooses otherwise, his fate is more horrifying still. A group will gather to perform the ritual, the wise men of the tribe who know what will happen, and the strong men who will hold him in ropes if he struggles. They light a fire at sunrise and some will pray over him, or sing songs in the breaking dawn.

A sacred knife is brought out and laid directly into the fire until the blade chars over with soot from the flames. And then the one who has asked this man to chose his punishment will ask the man to remove the weapon from the heart of the fire, without dropping the knife or crying with the pain of it. If he can do so he will be pardoned and banished from the tribe. If not, the ritual will continue.

His hands will be bound with rope and he will be tied to the trunk of a tree. There he will be left for six days with only the drop of rainfall - if it comes - to aide him in staying life, and he will not eat, and he will not be spoken to. At dusk of the sixth day someone will come to his side. And though his will is broken already as he starves and wastes against the ropes and the tree, he will struggle once more. His dæmon, his only company and his eternal companion will be taken from him. The bare hands of another man will struggle and bind his dæmon, tying with rope or rags, and the two will be pulled.

The bond between a man and his dæmon is strong, and though they will be pulled they will not be separated, but will be in great pain. And though his ropes burn raw sores all along his body, the man will strain against them and cry out and plead. And they will bury his dæmon deep underground as she struggles, and they will win. And they will leave again.

For six more days the man will live as a man. He will endure the pain of separation from his dæmon, he will know her suffering as she is buried, he will feel the suffocation of it and the blackness of it and the tearing blighting unhappiness of it, and he will know madness. And madness will be his only comfort as she - his only and his own - loses strength, and must be overcome.

And the knife from the fire - which would still have imprinted into its hilt the burned flesh from the man's own hands - will be brought before the man. Words will be spoken, and his bonds will be cut. He will fall forward from the weakness but he will not die. He will stand if he is told, he will fight if he is told, he will throw himself into a gorge if he is told. But he will do nothing else, nothing unless he is told. And he will do so for as long as he remains. And he is no longer a man, he is the tool used and created from man, but now he is _zombi_ only: the thing which must be forced to live at the will of another with no dreams of its own.

"That en't a thing you should be puttin' in the ear of a little girl." The nurse chided at him, "Make her grow up twisted, that will. Keep 'em young while you can is what's right."

"Is it then?" The father's dæmon flicked the tip of her tail just once - the smallest movement.

He kissed the bundle one last time. "You dream now, my child. I'll do what I can about the rest of the world."

She fell asleep in his lap.


	16. Sixth Measure: Half Steps

She clicked the journal shut. "This is," she paused and Feddin glanced up and notice how pale she'd become. "This is so dreadful, Feddin."

"Some things are," he replied and looked back to _The Moral Debate on Properly Addressing a Mailing to Create New Capital Ventures_.

"But..." Another pause. Feddin watched her shifting in her seat, very unprofessional, very unlady-like. Maybe she would understand, maybe she'd change her mind about her threat to call his father in. "Your father has partnerships with very good merchants from the Ivory Coast, not one of them with any criminal blood to their family names and all with a number of profittable deals he told me, raw goods shipments from which the receipts would raise quite the polished brow?"

"We lived there five months, ma'am."

"That doesn't seem long enough to believe such terrible things. I'm sure your father couldn't bear with such a story from his own son. I'll continue looking over this journal, but I believe I'll call on him." She nearly sounded apologetic, "I really don't think he would like to hear what you've written about."

She was young, she was pretty, she was ignoring everything he was telling her. And on a professional level, she was interrupting his studies with her commenting. She was sleeping with his father. He knew it.


	17. Cutouts

Once Upon a Time there was a young man who was very poor, and very unhappy...

The young man longed for power and for wealth, but had not the means. His parents were poor farmers and could not provide for their son a future with prosperity and happiness. So taking his only possessions with him in a knapsack, the young man and his dæmon left home and went to explore the distant lands to the east. For his journey, he'd taken one of the family's goats to sell before going too far. At the first town he reached he sold the goat for six copper pieces, and both seller and buyer counted the other man among fools.

With his small but newfound fortune the man bought up supplies and set out with heightened spirits and need. After many days of travel, the young man discovered a pig in the wild, and through wit sharpened by hunger he captured the animal and would thereafter escape into forests to feed himself without using his fortune.

The young man traveled many days by foot. He walked each day from dawn until his feet were sore and the sky was dark. He slept in fields when it could save him from spending what little he had, and he stole space in farmer's barns when his dæmon could find a way in and they had a dark corner to hide in.

And at last he had traveled such a distance that he felt nearly ready to discover his fortune in life. He stood on a hillside and saw that the quickest way to the next town was through a great forest, and made his way there to take the shortcut and catch his meal along the way.

However, the forest was enchanted, and no human dared go there for fear of upsetting the great spirits who lived there. But the young man was foreign to the place and could not know such a thing. He laid twigs and branches down as a trap for small wild animals and sat behind a bush to wait.

The young man did not wait long before a small grey fox appeared and was caught in his trap. It struggled, but the young man's dæmon took on the form of a large cat and together they overcame the animal and broke its neck. He built a fire and prepared the animal for roasting.

It was then as the darkness became complete that the young man began hearing voices speaking to him in the forest. At first they quietly begged him to leave, but then the voices became louder and shouted spells at him that made him stand still in one place just as he held a flaming stick to put into the fire. His dæmon had taken on the form of a lizard to lie in the warmth of the flames and she was similarly frozen in place.

The voices began jeering as they saw the young man standing like a statue. And then the Great Spirit spoke hidden within the forest trees:

"Why is this human in our forest?"

"It wishes for death!" The other spirits replied as one.

"Does it wish for death?" The Great Spirit said to the man.

"Not death, Great Spirit, I wish for power and wealth. I wish to become a great man and build a great kingdom around me. For these reasons I have left my home and journeyed far. Allow me passage through your forest and I will have mercy on you when I am a great man."

But the Great Spirit laughed at this.

"You shall die here!" The spirit said loudly. "You shall be devoured by the spirits of the forest!"

"No," replied the young man, "I shall destroy this place before it destroys me." The young man used all his will to move the arm which held the flaming stick. "With this flame I shall set the trees of this forest ablaze, and set the pure sky above cloudy and thick with smoke from it. Your land will be destroyed and man shall settle in the flatness of the plains in its destruction! So even if I die it is man who will overcome you, Great Spirit!"

The spirit saw his threats for truth and so seeing, told him "Very well, then you shall have the power and wealth you desire. This land shall be yours. We of the forest will give you this without qualm and with many riches for you, but you must not destroy the forest and you must do us a favor in return."

"What favor can I grant? I am a man of no things and no influence." The man said.

"You shall soon be a man of many things, and all that you desire. You will be called upon to fulfill the promise at the time in which you obtain all things you truly desire. This is what I ask of you."

And the man agreed to this. His dreams were vast and strong, his desires would never fully be obtained. Indeed, if it were possible he would be aged well beyond his time. With luck the spirits of the forest would forget the promise of a young impoverished man.

"Very well." The Great Spirit said. "First we shall arrange our side of the bargain promised.

"Take one of your copper pieces and plant it here at the root of this tree. In three days return to this place and see what you will find."

The young man did not want to part with what was a full third of his remaining fortune, but he was scared of the spirits of the forest if he did not obey the commands of their bargain. With deep regret at his shortcut, he dug a hole deep in the earth at the foot of the tree trunk and buried his coin there. He scattered grass and twigs to cover up the ground he'd moved and prayed that no one would find the coin when he left.

Then the young man thanked the spirits of the forest and left them quickly behind. He had travelled two-thirds of a day on foot when he reached a small village, and there finding himself sore of foot and rotten with hunger, bought his night's stay at an inn for another of his copper coins. A meal of tough but filling bread and a vegetable stew greeted him in his room, and he was content to sleep the night. So contented was he in his stay and with his escape from the forest that he decided that here he and his dæmon would find their fortune and he arranged with the innkeeper to stay another night.

The following day the young man went out to search for his place. He spoke with a local tradesman first who worked in a furnace to create elegant plates he sold to rich families. But the young man had no experience with the trade and was turned away. Next he went to the local pub, but was again turned away. The bar owner had three children of his own to run the chores and needed no further help. He spoke with a woman who spun wool into knots but looked foolish when she said it was woman's work and that her father sheared the animals for her. Again, he was unneeded. Feeling downtrodden in his efforts, the man went back to the inn where he spoke to the innkeeper.

"If you're willing to travel further still, I know of a job where they would take you." She said.

The young man was by now very much aware that he would have nothing left by dawn and no hope of earning anything, and so hearing this was put lighter to heart.

"I would be most happy in any place you can offer, and should for ever after consider you my benefactor and luck in all things I do."

The woman was charmed by his sentiments, and saying this told the young man where he should seek employment.

Thanking her again, the young man left at daybreak. He should walk through the morning on the road leading North from the village, and take the left branch when the choice met him. The next thing they would encounter would be a large hut by the side of the road at a lake. There he would find an old man seeking an apprentice for his trade. He'd be given a bed to sleep in and time to catch fish from the lake to eat, or to plant vegetables for himself. He would receive no pay for the first year, but thereafter would be permitted to earn pay as an apprentice through the trade he would learn.

The woman had made no mention of what trade this was, but the young man was prepared for anything - and he'd told her as much.

The master he met in the hut by the lake was a bird trainer. He kept cages for hunting birds and cages for diving and fishing birds. He had a large set of cages which held pigeons, and those would be trained to carry messages over great distances.

The young man was fascinated by the trade and picked it up quickly with his master's help. He would use his trapping knowledge he'd learned and his dæmon would change into a bird herself to lure new birds from the surrounding woods to be trained. And his master quickly found him useful, for the man had never found a wife and so had no children to carry on his trade.

Soldiers would come from the surrounding kingdoms to buy the messenger birds for use within their armies. Rich lords would come to buy the hunting birds, and poor villagers would buy the fishing birds to help them with those fish that slipped through their nets with their daily catches. Though it was not what he dreamed, the young man knew that it was useful and he was able to live within restraints from the trade he learned.

Still, the young man longed for his wealth and his fortune and the happiness that would surely bring him. And he would earn none of it here; his master sometimes took fish from the villagers as payment, and had once taken the sword from a soldier in place of payment.

But the young man was faithful to his old master until the man's death. And before he died he asked the young man to bury him by the side of the lake, with a coin on his chest to bribe the devils from their prize when they came for his soul. The young man was to inscribe his master's name on one side and the man's dæmon on the other. In this way also the man would pay for his dæmon to be saved from the devils.

But when the man died, he left no coins to his apprentice. And so the young man was forced to seek the only coin he knew of which he had buried some years ago in a forest far south of his master's hut. The young man was frightened to return to the forest again, but would do so still. He had been a good apprentice and though he did not plan to return to training birds, he wanted to remember his master well.

So the young man used his birds to catch some game for his journey, and set out South to finish his master's wishes. He reached the forest before nightfall and walked into the heart of the dark forest to wait until darkness came. There he would confront the Great Spirit again and ask for his coin back if it remained buried still.

The quieter voices came first again, and whispered excitedly amongst themselves from their hiding places in the forest trees. And then the Great Spirit revealed itself to the young man as a loud voice from within the forest.

"You return at last!" The Great Spirit said.

"I have returned to obtain the coin we bargained over, Great Spirit, for you have not made well on your promise and I must reclaim what is rightfully my own."

At this the Great Spirit laughed just as the young man remembered.

"But it is you who did not seek to find the bargain fulfilled. Look in the clearing ahead of you and find what you have planted, man."

And the man obeyed the Great Spirit, for he was still afraid. And in the clearing ahead he beheld the most magnificent thing of his life. Before him a tree had grown tall and splendid. Both in stature and in canopy the tree reigned over its companions. But what was most magnificent was that each leaf and twig of the entire tree was made of solid copper. It had grown from the man's copper coin.

"Great Spirit," the man said, "How wrong of me to say you have not made well on your promise, for this is surely mine and will surely lead me to all things I desire."

"But we are hard parted in our bargain for you have in some way defeated us, though you are only a man. This giant tree you see before your eyes was meant to be only a sapling for you. We had thought man a far too curious and wicked creature to endure patience enough for the tree to grow large. But in our expectations we are defeated, and you the victor. If your patience be true then sleep now under your copper tree, to fell only when sunrise comes, and discover what the morning brings you."

But the man had realised then that the spirit was his enemy and had meant to trick him those many years ago. Because he'd been frightened enough to stay away from the forest, and lucky enough to find work and food on his own, the coin he'd planted in the ground - meant only to be a sapling of small fortune to him - had become a full and glorious tree with sunlight splintering from each rich, vuluptuous leaf. The great tree was his own decadant fortune from his own copper piece.

"I shall wait until the morning as you've advised before felling this tree," the man told his opponent, "But I will not sleep under its boughs for you have been a trickster this long time, and my enemy as well. I will return here in the morning and finally reap the payment of my bargain then."

And so he returned to the hut where his master had died, without his copper coin to place on the man's breast as he buried him. But the young man had moved beyond being a simple bird trainer already. He took the sword his master had taken from the soldier as payment and after he'd buried the man he left the hut by the lake.

With his promise to the forest spirits in mind, the man returned to his copper tree in awe when the morning came, for before him he discovered the copper tree had blossomed overnight. More than blossoms, the tree had laid fruit all over the ground as well during the night. Dark pod-like fruit oblong in shape and just larger than the size of his fist laid all around the base of the tree.

"Our promise is good, man. Here lies the fruit of what you have planted with your hands and with our help." The Great Spirit spoke to him still from the darkness of the forest canopy. "Will you now build the kingdom you promised?"

"Show yourself, Spirit!" The man called loudly, for the first time unafraid to see his greatest foe. "Your bargain is good and I will thank the one who has made me rich."

And the Great Spirit leaped down from the tree he'd been hiding in. The Great Spirit bowed to him. It was a dark grey fox, plain and small, but his foe nonetheless.

"I thank you, Great Spirit. And now I will seek all that I desire to fulfill my bargain to you." Saying thus he raised his master's sword over his head and in one stroke cut through the neck of the grey fox. Blood poured from the detached head onto the ground and from the blood sprang small golden sprigs of trees.

The man had desired death for the spirit, but the spirit had a bargain to keep, and had known his fate, for the fruits which landed below the copper tree where the spirit had told the man to sleep, were made of solid gold and would smash a man's skull if he slept there.

"At last, I have won." The man cried, "I have won my riches and I shall win my kingdom now! And I shall have all that I desire when I am old and grey with the finest wines my kitchen staff can find, by the largest fireplace stoked with rich smokeless woods imported from other kingdoms! Only then I shall have all that I desire!"

You have made a fool's bargain," the man said. His dæmon took on the form of a small grey fox so the forest would obey them, and together they began building their kingdom.

The man felled his fortune tree and built a great castle with his riches. He made a large stable and kept many horses and bought the elegant plates from the man who had refused his apprenticeship those years ago.

He made his kingdom stronger and made his lands wider until the village where he'd meant to find his fortune became his own village. Remembering this, he went to thank the innkeeper woman for the kindness she had given him those long years ago.

But at the inn instead of the old woman he remembered, he found working a beautiful young woman. Her dæmon was a delicate white dove, and she apologised and said the innkeeper, who was her mother, had died. But the man had fallen in love with the beautiful young woman from the first moment he saw her and all thoughts of thanking her mother were quickly gone.

"Your mother was my luck in all things," he said, "I ask for your hand in marriage so that she may also be the luck of my love."

The young woman was flattered and agreed to marry the man. She held his hand and said that together they would create a great kingdom. And together they did create a vast kingdom so that they became King and Queen and before long the kingdom had even a young Prince to celebrate. But there was no celebration to compare to that of the second-born child: a Princess.

She was born to the young King and Queen, and celebrated throughout the land as no birth before hers had been.


	18. Seventh Measure: Poco a Poco Cresc

"Feddin?" His tutor called across the study. "This is quite different." She gasped, then, "Oh! It's continued from before, isn't it?"

Feddin shifted in his seat and concentrated firmly on the political trading rights treaties of the coastal regions of Norroway.


	19. Perforated Edges

Once Upon a Time there was a young prince who was very rich, and very unhappy...

The young Prince longed for simple family life rather than the splendid palace and kingdom to rule over. But the Prince was to be rule one day and so the King was strict with the young Prince and would not allow him to have any friends. And because he was next in line to the throne, the King himself, his own father, did not love the young Prince.

So it was that when the King and Queen announced the birth of a little daughter that the young Prince was happy at last. A Princess would not threaten the throne, and having another child in the palace meant the Prince would at last have a friend. And the young Prince loved his sister with all his heart th first day she was born. But the young Prince was also jealous, for the father whose love he had long desired freely loved the little girl from the day she was born.

The King spoke to advisers from other kingdoms to arrange a marriage for the young Princess and held a grand ball as a celebration of her birth. But in truth, the King had planned to choose a future husband for the new Princess from among the attendees of the ball. The King desired to strengthen his ties with the surrounding kingdoms and the newborn Princess gave him everything he needed to do so.

The ball began grandly, and was attended far and wide by admirers across the land. The young Prince was happy to see such enthusiasm for his new sister, but he did not know the true intentions of the King. And as the night wore on, the King at last signed a document with one of the ruling families to the north so that his newborn Princess would marry a young Prince from that line.

And at the end of the night the King stood by his throne and looked over the ballroom and spoke with his grey fox dæmon.

"At last we have gained such power. How vast and wealthy we have become to stand here. And suitors line up at our gates to gain marriage into our great kingdom. At last we have our wealth and power." He said.

And when he'd spoken the words, the King regretted it instantly. For he recognized immediately when the light in the room changed and the guests moved from the dance floor. And he knew that the spirits of the dark forest, with whom he had bargained to gain his fortune, were at last returning to gather what he had promised to them in the bargain.

The mystery took over the ballroom. A great tree sprouted in the middle of the dance floor and grew enormous in its space. The floor shook as it grew and shattered columns and ice sculptures. The Queen ran to the side of the pink bassinet to protect the child there, and the young Prince took a place at her side, for he also did not want the young Princess to be hurt. The whole room smelled of earth and wood as the tree settled its roots around the palace ballroom. Whispers could be heard from the tree's branches and the guests screamed and fled from the castle so that the royal family was left alone in the great castle.

"Man," the spirits spoke, hidden in the tree's canopy. "We have come to claim what you owe to us. We call on you to invoke what has been promised in our bargain." And the King knew the spirits for what they were, for the tree which had taken root in the ballroom was a match to the great copper tree he had felled years before.

"I have not obtained all that I desire." The King said to the spirits, but they did not believe his words.

"What you desired most, you have obtained." The spirits said. "What you desired most was the object which would bring you the most power. This object you have obtained. And now to seal the bargain, we take that object from you."

The King tried again beckoning the spirits, and tried to rebargain with them. But the great spirits paid the man no heed. The spirits would speak no more to the King and the great copper tree shrunk back through the floor of the ballroom where the marble floor fell back into place as if the event had never happened.

But the young Queen began to scream and they knew that the event had been true, for the pink bassinet was now empty. The spirits had taken from the man the object which gave him the most power. They had taken the young Princess as payment for the man's Kingdom.

The Young Prince was heartbroken immediately and he tried to comfort his mother. But the young Queen would not be calmed and when she spoke she turned against her husband for what black deal he had made.

"My child is gone!" She cried. "A curse on this kingdom! A curse on my husband who made a promise with the dark spirits and a curse on myself who loved the man! May I never love again!" And because the Queen had in her some magical ancestry which she knew not of, her dæmon - a beautiful white dove - flew to her breast, and together they gleamed copper like the great tree only moments before had, and there in the middle of the castle ballroom they turned together into a statue of solid marble.

Now the King was at a loss. While he had loved both his wife and his daughter greatly, he still had his kingdom to rule over and his people to protect. Because the pact he'd made with the spirits of the forest had been paid at last he did not worry for his kingdom. But it was still his kingdom: his own he'd created from the riches won against the spirits of the forest. And so the King did not seek to find his daughter and did not seek to revive the Queen from her stone shell, but instead continued ruling the kingdom he had created.

So it happened that the only one to mourn was the young Prince. And the young Prince would spend every spare moment in the dark forest trying to find the spirits and uncover the bargain made by his father. And the young Prince would whisper to the marble statue in the ballroom that had been his mother that he loved her, and he told her this so that only she could hear. And the young Prince would search for the sister he lost. And he would mourn what had happened.

But the young Prince could never be happy in his father's kingdom. Because the man had created the kingdom in a dark bargain, the kingdom could hold nothing but darkness for the young Prince. And so he knew that even though he stayed by his father's side and was instructed on how to rule a kingdom, that he would never find the young Princess, and he would never free the Queen. For they had both been lost to the kingdom his father created. Forevermore, they would remain lost.

And the young Prince would come to know his own destiny someday. And his dæmon would settle as a bird of the sea, because those birds traveled from place to place, and perhaps it was happiness they sought. And someday the young Prince might discover happiness again at last, in a kingdom he would create all his own.


	20. Eighth Measure: Dischord

The room needed more sun. More windows. More things to look at than his studies, more things to enjoy, more freedom, more living. It was more likely he'd suffocate than actually learn to breathe in that atmosphere.

Feddin balanced the open book over his face and leaned back into the plush of the couch. He moved the pens from his right side to his left side. He listened to the grandfather clock in the hall strike just once - a quarter hour. The book fell onto the floor and he didn't move to pick it up. Trapped, always. Trapped and alone. And not brave enough to run.

The door to the private library opened and his tutor came in as he sat up quickly playing attentive, studious, committed. Perfect. She was flushed and her little dæmon fluttered absently unhelpful, Feddin noticed. He wondered until he saw the object she'd hidden as she walked in: his journal. She was still reading, at least. _If she'd phone the police with the journal as evidence then surely_ - but Feddin didn't know what could happen, just something was better than now. His father had probably already paid the authorities around Abingdon to keep quiet.

She sat down by his side and picked up the book he'd left on the floor. A warm hand on his knee, a smile of pure sincerity and care on her pretty young face. _Maybe it had been right to trust..._

"Feddin, what you're writing here are the things you've imagined happened." His tutor put a hand against his cheek and slowly pulled him to her chest in an embrace. "I understand that things have been difficult on you, now that you're alone. Your father explained things to me, but these are fictions, these are lies that you've created to cover up the pain you have."

She'd phoned his father, it was the only thing.

"Don't worry," she held him close. "Everything will be better tomorrow when he gets here."

His dæmon was behind the couch, but Feddin heard her agitation as she squakwed and dug her beak into her feathers to disguise it. He stiffened against the traitor's touch.


	21. Confrontation

"Your tutor tells me you've worked up some nasty accusations against the old man." His father stared down his nose at Feddin as he entered the house, quickly filling the entryway with his presence, his luggage not far behind to occupy what remained. One hand forced his jacket onto the butler, the other picked at the invisible flecks of distaste on his suit which inevitably fell like dust in the sunlight - perpetually noticeable - into any room he'd share with his son.

Some formality or expectation from the tutor, smiling coyly, happily by the door kept Feddin from receiving his first blow directly at the entryway.

"I'll fetch in mum, Sir." He played the game, a son obedient as any servant. But his hatred for the master and his inability to leave kept him lower still: slave.

His mother had been moved by the driver into her wheelchair when Feddin reached the sidewalk.

"Please, allow me." The driver stepped away and Feddin went around to the wheelchair's handles.

"Hello, mum. I'm glad to see you again."

She didn't respond as he pushed her up the impromptu ramp - two boards from a shed out back - bumped her along where they didn't meet perfectly against the steps.

"I love you." He whispered, for her alone. But still she didn't respond. Her pigeon dæmon, limp, blanched, laid across her lap. He hadn't flown in years. She hadn't spoken in years. Feddin still loved her, but she'd hardened herself in the grief.

"Put her in the library" His father spoke as the pair entered. Just something to move around. "And bring the offending journal into the study, please. I'll have some port brought in." The last went to one of the servants he'd brought as another part of the mobile collection. His father collected airs and appearances as a hobbyist might attend to a personal entomology of butterflies - creatures deadened by his hands, pinned, and kept close to look over. Others might admire the collection from afar, remark on its taste and expanse, but none would ever be close enough to discover the winged beauties did not smile.

Feddin hated each moment they shared.

"In here," his father called from the study, wine in hand already when Feddin arrived. The tutor had brought the journal in, but had left with a curtsy - another player, subservient as Feddin. He wondered if she curtsied just as politely leaving his father's bedroom, but checked his nasty thoughts knowing what his real anger was with her: she was abandoning him.

Feddin and his father stood alone in the study.

"This is what all the fuss is over, then." His father picked up the journal and thumbed through it quickly. "It's worthless, you understand." A piece of paper fell out from the pages of the journal - a receipt of payment signed by _Capt. Mag_. Shipment weight totaling just over a tonne, cargo listed: 3 large wooden crates measuring eight metres long and three metres wide, contents listed: wool sweaters and smoke leaf. Port of Embarkment from London with a destination of Trollesund, Norroway. The freight ship boasted a cargo hold of no small proportions, far larger than three wooden crates.

It wasn't true evidence, Feddin knew as much. Even the receipt was more than his usual luck in whatever information he'd been able to pay off the various crews to find the truth of what smuggling his father had been involved in.

"I could call the police." Feddin said quietly.

"Could you?" His father gave him a smug look and settled into one of the study chairs. He tucked the journal behind himself. "I suspect they wouldn't believe anything you'd have to say to them," he continued. "The hospitals here may have been given some medical records that say you've gotten a bit too much of your mother in you."

Too much and much too soon. A bluff or more, Feddin could never tell the difference. He felt his insides heating, a fog tinted his vision. He wanted to scream. He couldn't play perfect here, not alone with the man he despised.

"Don't you talk about mum."

His dæmon hissed unnaturally at the other man's. He did not regret the form she'd settled as, but if she'd have had sharp teeth, or even the talons of the hunting birds, Feddin would have dared to challenge the man right then.

"You think I didn't love your mother? Well, I did. She was beautiful and she was smart -"

"She's still here! She's still alive and still beautiful and still smart!" Feddin cut him off yelling and the fight transitioned fluidly into German. If anyone had thought to listen by the door the speed of their shouts quickly outpaced any learned translation.

"You made her like that with what you did, you tore her heart out!" Feddin accused.

"You know nothing of that." His father spoke carefully.

"I know you sold her off to them

"And she was just another black mark in the town charter and you got away - you got profit and you got more ships just so one kid - just because the pattern was showing up, just because too many poor kids were disappearing, and they needed someone else. So it was random, so no one in the town would think they could pay them off - to keep their family and their businesses safe, because they wouldn't be paid off. And no one could say anything so they had to be scared, always scared. Because they owned it all" The scathing was deep in his voice now, making him sound gruffer than his seventeen years had right for him to be. "The whole town and the mines outside and all the labor. And they owned the kids. But you paid them off, father," The word rounded sarcastically in his mouth and spat back out like a curse. "You made that deal all those important men you treat to lunch spend their lives looking for and now you made your fortune off that. You gave them your daughter."

Sudden stinging. Pain. Something grating. Feddin was on the floor. His blind raging had kept him from seeing the fist his father had swung at him.

"That girl." His father growled slowly.

Feddin waited, breathing too quickly from his yelling, nervous of what he'd said and more terrified than simply nervous of the reaction he'd brought to himself.

"That girl wasn't supposed to be part of the deal." His father spoke quietly, regaining his calm demeanor. "That girl was meant for so much more than the first deal."

But Feddin had started the fight and would not calm until he was spent. "Elli, dad. Her name was Elisabeth!" He snapped, "and you didn't give them just some girl. You couldn't overlook her thinking she would just die on the street like the other kids - you couldn't think that and mum couldn't forgive herself for you ever!"

His father screwed up his face but said nothing.

"Why her? Why her?" Feddin began sobbing through his fury.

His father turned the snarl back on and struck the boy across the face again. All his stubborn calm left and his small dæmon jumped up to snap her jaws angrily at Feddin's dæmon as she flew trackless around the room. "You think I wouldn't have given them _you instead?_" He roared. The nature of the predator folded into the small study room in a way to thicken its thirsting, driving desire. His dæmon had caught Feddin's in her mouth by this time, held gently, carefully, anticipating the next move.

"You think it _was supposed to be her?_" The dæmon bit down, just slightly and Feddin cried out more in shock than true pain. His dæmon squawked loudly with him. Her heart fluttered against the teeth that pinned her from escape.

Three years. Three years. His head spun. His face hurt. His eyes burned and his father continued yelling. Three years. Elli disappeared. Elli was taken. Elli was sold off. Three years.

There once was a little boy who was full of wonder at the world. He traveled with his parents and his younger sister and was able to see many spectacular things. But the most spectacular thing he knew about he never even saw himself.

One day when his family stayed in a nice manse along the coastline a ship came to rest in the deeper water beyond the rocks. The crew of the ship took a boat ashore to rest for the night.

The boy was feeling very brave, having just turned fourteen years old, and so he walked along the shoreline to their campfire to greet them. He thought they might be pirates and wanted to join with them and invade fortresses and learn to fight with swords. And although the crew of sailors laughed at what he'd thought about them, they were good hearted and invite him to sit with them.

"But you are not pirates, I won't have my adventure here!" He said and stomped his feet at the invitation, unhappy to reach the plain fishing crew.

"We may only catch fish, but all men of the seas will know adventure in their time." They called back. And the boy was sated and sat down in the stones and mud with the men.

The sailors kept their word and although the men stank of drying fish they also smelled like salt and sea and breeze: adventure.

They told the young boy stories about where they'd sailed to. And the young boy told them stories about where his family had traveled - by ship often, too, for his father owned a small shipping company.

This made the sailors unhappy that they had no new stories of places to offer the boy, and so they came up with other stories; things they hadn't actually seen, but things that were heard of: mermaids and their great scaley fish dæmons, sea monsters, an enormous squid who stole the sails from the great merchant ships to use for handkerchiefs, a place in the ocean where men's dæmons acted wild, and scarier still another place - an island - where if you jumped from a particular waterfall into a particular basin of water your dæmon disappeared completely before you hit the water and she'd never return.

The boy was delighted and had thought he'd never heard better stories in his entire life. Until he heard one more.

An older sailor spoke up from within the crowd. His dæmon was an albatross, and the young boy was full of superstition the moment the man began speaking. His albatross dæmon stayed aloft the entire time he spoke. And when he'd finished, the young boy knew he'd never hear anything so important from anyone ever again. He said this to the man, but the sailors laughed at him, for children often said rash words. But as if to prove them wrong, the young boy's dæmon took on the form of an albatross out of respect, and he did not get angry at the laughter which followed them as the boy and his dæmon left the campfire, because they knew that what he had told the man was true.

And whether out of respect, or admiration, or the simple fact that he was born a shipping merchant's son, the young boy returned home to his parents with his albatross dæmon, and she would never change form again.

The father could see the realisation breaking over the son's face. Like a wave that washes over the sand: a gentle motion, and yet as it falls back with the same gentle suck bubbles escape from the little life there below while it battles and strains to not be ripped from its fought-out safety and backward into the heaving current. With a glance his dæmon released Feddin's and the seabird flopped in its own sad crushed way back to the young man. Feddin hardly realized. He stared at the carpet rather than the man.

"Me," the word escaped so lightly from behind pressed lips.

"It was your fault the deal had to change."

Feddin held his frightened dæmon to himself absently as he sat upright on the floor of the study. His father continued without regard and his grey fox dæmon, relieved of the flopping burden, leaped onto his lap when the man perched himself on the study desk.

"Strange has a son - Elisabeth was set to marry him. Would have made a fortune in that partnership. Merchants and the mapmakers, catalogues and wholesales. Sell off the best routes at the highest rates, never plot out the new channels they're building in the peninsula. Markups on the direct imports in his shops would've been astonishing. Export his business to the East - they need better charts there anyhow. New Denmark has surely changed since he sent his crew out to survey." The man clicked his tongue, he was thinking aloud now, staring across the globe he rotated under his hand, unhindered by morals in front of a son with such enormous distaste for his person. It was just as always, he spun the globe around and around: his always. There was no place he could not own as long as he paid to be there.

Feddin was living in his father's world. He had known it for far too long. He had known for far too long that there was no place for him in it. And there were no more tears left to him, no more of the salt water of his father's world; just a bitter taste, so cold and quick it felt like sinking somewhere deep inside his gut.

He stood at last, excused himself, and left the room.

The journal would be done with as soon as his father called the servants in to light the fireplace; that was the way with evidence to rumours. Just as the things themselves, it could not exist. The rational world knew about impossible.

His father was a good man, a successful merchant. He had no dark history. He cared so lovingly for his wife, poor thing. He had not made deals to ship mysterious goods to the North. He had not bargained the deal using his daughter. There were no secrets, there were no hidden organisations. These were stories and lies: things did not happen as you'd heard and his father's voice was louder than his own.

Feddin whispered as he left. "Abra cadabra."

His father would leave the following morning.


	22. Happily Ever After

The thing had sat in his suitcase for years. If it had been laid to sit in a drawer it would have been lost along the way.

Feddin had learned much from the people he met during his seventeen years. He'd met a family of gypsies who'd taught him to fool people with card tricks - presumably for some form of money in return, he'd met a Tartar woman who had taught him to tack legs onto the bottom of stools, and paint poems on their tops in bright paints. He could curse in eight languages fluently and knew at least the worst words in thirteen. He'd met many people: families, individuals, friends, enemies, associates. And he'd met Jim.

Jim fell off the ship.

Jim fell off the ship and when Feddin pulled him back on he'd said in perfect German "No, please, I don't speak English." And when Feddin laughed and responded back in the same language, he had narrowed his eyes.

Jim was in technical terms a stowaway. Feddin should have reported him to his father's men like a good son. But Feddin hadn't had a desire to be a good son. What Feddin had was a desire to study Jim's identification - the one he'd produced first that gave him the name "Franklyn" - and they bargained for that over the price of his passage.

And Feddin had studied the card well. He'd made his own in the years that followed, using up some of his free time at printers and newspaper outlets, happy for all the strange things he'd learned over the years which helped him reproduce a decent-looking identification. But still he'd been unsure if he could follow through on its intended use: escape.

And now he had the thing in his hand: his new name, new identity. All the money he had saved, all the money he had snatched from his father. All the freedom and opportunity he could desire. He even had a direction. All he had to do was run.

He smiled as he thought about it. He didn't even have to run. He was alone. No one would even chase. It would be a treat for his father to loose the delinquent son. The papers would report his disappearance - just like Elli's. The businessman would start redistributing funds to his holders with the company as a bargaining chip and the only possible heir out of the way. He had been brought up to be certain of that much. His mother might grieve for him, but at least it would be a change. He walked to the front door of his house, walked out, and locked the door behind him.


	23. Once Upon A Time

"Smith." He responded again more loudly to the man sitting opposite him.

"Ah, Smith. You sound foreign, I would've thought -"

"I was born in Germany, actually. I've traveled a great deal, but it seems I can't be rid of the accent." Feddin smiled broadly and the old man nodded.

"Wish I'd have had a bit more to travel with." He sighed, "suppose you get nostalgic with times as they are, always running faster and here's me getting older. Time's made for the young, you know."

"Yes." Feddin agreed. He pushed his suitcase back under the upholstered wooden seat as their cab bumped it out of place again. The distance was long enough to offer to share the fare with another rider, and the old man was superstitious enough to want to share with the young man who had an albatross for his dæmon: traveler's luck. He'd been lucky his destination was so popular.

Feddin sat back into the hard seat. "Well, we both have time right now," he decided, "If you'd like to be nostalgic, I promise I'm a good listener."

* * *

**The End**

* * *

_Author Notes_

Because I'm maddening and couldn't possible end a 'Once Upon A Time...' with 'Happily Ever After.' And what comes next anyway if not just another Once Upon A Time...

I wanted to say fifteen thousand different things in author notes but I've decided to narrow it to:

Thank you for reading  
I really loved breaking conventions and getting away with fairy tale talk on this one  
I hope you got all the connections I made  
If not well then that's my fault  
Probably

Some character names, places, terms, and ideas are copyright Philip Pullman etc. and are part of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Kutsumono or The Phantom Thief is my own semi-tribute to my favorite fairy tale, The Shoes That Were Danced To Pieces and the title comes from my love of all the double-titled Pullman books out there. The Cave should be obvious if I did it right and reverse as I intended. Black Shuck was the star of my favorite cartoon episode as a kid, only he was called Hound.

The Birds and The Fishes I had six or seven clever glamorous titles for and laughed them off when I realized it was basically A sex talk on the witch time line. And I apologize for the Zombi Story. I asked the narrator to tell me about the spy flies but he was exasperated with the world and angry with his lover and running from the law to boot.

And now tell me what bread crumbs I've been scattering and which name I've been referring to incorrectly and you'll find perhaps that my main character does have a place in the story after all.

And thanks again for reading. I had a lot of fun with this one! I think I edited better than I ever have before and have learned a lot about not needing excessive language, not being apologetic about magics, generally things I thought I was incapable of doing.


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